


Funeral March of a Marionette

by mimsical



Series: 2020 Exchanges, Bangs, and Challenges [3]
Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Manipulation, Interpersonal dynamics, Kaishin Big Bang 2020 (Meitantei Conan), Kaitou Kid Heist, Koizumi Akako/Kuroba Kaito (Unrequited), Kuroba Kaito Needs A Hug, M/M, Phantom Thief-Typical Absurdity, Psychological Trauma, Secret Identity, Soul Bond, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, i love kaito he's a good baby and he's doing his best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:21:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 43,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25672018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimsical/pseuds/mimsical
Summary: Not everyone finds their soulmate. Many give up after years of waiting and searching despite the empty feeling that persists in their chest. However, if soulmates do happen to meet, even if it's an interaction as fleeting as hearing their voice over a radio transmission, the bond forever tries to bring them together.Kuroba Kaito has been aware of his soulmate in Kudou Shin'ichi for months, but it's only recently that he decided to begin testing the waters to clue Shin'ichi in. Yet in doing so he has somehow pissed off the red witch — his old classmate, Koizumi Akako. Now cursed, Kaito is thrown through time again and again, always right before he's about to reveal their bond to his detective.
Relationships: Koizumi Akako & Kuroba Kaito | Kaitou Kid, Kudou Shinichi | Edogawa Conan/Kuroba Kaito | Kaitou Kid, Kuroba Kaito | Kaitou Kid & Nakamori Aoko
Series: 2020 Exchanges, Bangs, and Challenges [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1856839
Comments: 77
Kudos: 331
Collections: Lovely Pieces, kaishinbigbang 2020





	1. Over the Edge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [possessedTeaCup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/possessedTeaCup/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was written for the 2020 Kaishin Reverse Bang for the gorgeous art by possessedTeaCup shown below in the fic. Thanks so much for letting me write for your art and idea, TeaCup! It was a ton of fun and I'm thrilled with how the fic turned out.
> 
> I plan to post three chapters per week until all chapters are uploaded.

Kaito perched on the edge of the world, toes to the line, cloaked by the darkness of the night that surrounded him, soaking into the lines of his body until they blurred away like watercolor paint. He gazed out at the police cars far below, watched them mingle like uncertain party guests among the glittering masses of limousines and other, fancier cars, but the heist at hand wasn't what lingered in his mind.

No, Kaito was thinking about a different sort of plan.

The day before, he and Aoko had wandered down a path of conversation they hadn't taken in some time. It had been prompted by something, some gossip about how someone they'd gone to school with might have met their soulmate. Aoko had relayed this particular juicy bunch off the grapevine with the sort of tone that Kaito knew meant that she didn't think he would listen to a word, but she was going to tell him whether he liked it or not, and if he tried to get away, she would hunt him down and make him pay for resisting gossip hour with his best friend.

So, in short, he saved himself a lot of hassle, and stayed to listen, and it got him thinking once again about a fact that he had been grappling with, unsure how to find a safe way to proceed.

Kudou Shin'ichi was his soulmate. Kaito had known for some months, but hesitated to approach him because — well. The reason was evident in his perch on the rooftop. But last night during his shift at the Blue Parrot, Aoko had wound off into speculating about her own soulmate again. Kaito, frustrated by the constant barrier that KID interposed between them, had decided that for once, he didn't mind a bit of risk.

He'd told her that he knew who his soulmate was, and that he was thinking of approaching them about it.

Aoko, of course, had been beside herself, ecstatic for him and badgering him for any detail he was willing to confide. Kaito had remained tightlipped; Kudou Shin'ichi was, after all, a well-known attendee of his heists, and famous for a great deal of other deductive feats to boot.

But he'd meant it, and here he stood, waiting for the moment he would begin his infiltration, resolved once again to finally say something.

His sleep had been troubled the night before, and he thought he had dreamed of him. Not that this would be a first — Kaito had dreamed of Kudou many times since noticing the bond calling to them both, not to mention the recurring nightmare about Edogawa Conan he used to have a year or so back. But though he couldn't remember the details, something about the dream tugged at him, asking him to recall it.

"Bou-chama?" Jii prompted, and Kaito realized that he'd been spacing out.

"Is it time?" he asked, deciding not to backtrack the conversation to figure out what he'd missed.

He could hear the frown in Jii's voice. "Nearly," he agreed. "Are you sure you're prepared for this? Both Hakuba-kun and Kudou-kun have given you trouble in the past, and to have both of them in one place..."

Kaito laughed. "Relax, Jii-chan," he said. "It'll be a piece of cake, and besides. With this kind of crowd, there isn't a strategy in the world that could hold me once it's time to go."

Jii accepted this with minimal fuss, which Kaito took in stride. He hopped off the edge of the roof and returned to his supplies. He could feel the manic edge creeping into his grin, and let it happen. It was time to be KID, not Kuroba Kaito, after all.

"Alright," he said. "I'm going to head out. I'll meet you at the car 45 minutes after escaping, and we'll head home, yeah?"

That was the plan, they agreed. Kaito changed into his uniform as a drinks server for his initial infiltration. The rest of his costume he had stowed in the building itself, waiting for him to need it. He bounced on his toes once, twice, to shake the nervous energy out, and hurried toward the back of the building with the posture of someone who was running terribly late for work. The police stationed there checked his face, but the few prosthetics he was wearing were, out of long habit, not anywhere near his cheeks, and makeup took care of the rest. He let a trace of a grin cross his face once he was past the initial police line.

Showtime.

* * *

Leaning in towards the mirror, Kaito's hands remained steady as he redrew his lip liner, overdrawing the bottom lip just enough to give the illusion of greater plumpness. Once satisfied, the lipstick went over it with three quick swipes of a dark, creamy neutral. He surveyed himself in the mirror with satisfaction. There were only the tiniest of cracks left in his appearance, but only he knew where to look for them. It was damn near perfect.

Adjusting his grip on the little bronze clutch that accompanied the outfit, he turned on his heel and exited the bathroom into the full flush of the party.

Today, he was impersonating Kogawa Tamami, a young woman born to affluent parents who swanned in the same sort of circles as the Suzuki family, the Kudou family (if they hadn't been quite so absent), and (shudder) Hakuba. She was known to be a little cold, even to her acquaintances, a little bit distant, and that suited Kaito very well.

Absent-mindedly rubbing his lips together to spread the lipstick evenly, he made his way back to the table that the real Kogawa Tamami had vacated some minutes prior.

"There you are, darling," said Kogawa-san's boyfriend, Fukuda Daiki. Kaito favored him with a tiny quirk of the lips, more acknowledgment than smile, slipping the clutch behind him to rest against the small of his back as he sat. He would never understand why women carried such inconvenient purses.

"Well," he said aloud, tone soft and throaty. "With luck, the conversations won't be as terrible as it was when we were at Rin-chan's wedding, don't you agree? One would hope it wouldn't be too high a challenge to surmount."

The boyfriend chuckled at that, voicing some small agreement, but Kaito briefly lost all ability to attend to his words. There, a few tables away, looking self-assured and ever so slightly dangerous in his dress suit, was Kudou Shin'ichi.

For a thrilled moment, Kaito greedily drank in the sight of him, then forced his attention back to the boyfriend before his distraction was noticed. The last thing he needed to do was to start some male dominance posturing.

 _There_.

Though his actual posture didn't waver, Kaito's attention sharpened to blade-like on the necklace the hostess, Nishida Ine, was wearing. The large emerald _Sunrise in the Trees_ glittered at the hollow of her throat like a shiny lure, cooing to any thieves afoot that it was there for the taking. Unfortunately, standing at Nishida's side and speaking in what looked like flawless formal manners was the person Kaito had been most concerned about running into tonight, and the one who put his whole impersonation most at risk.

Hakuba Saguru's gaze assessed the crowd, and to Kaito's relief, no blaring "KID is here" alarm seemed to sound in Hakuba's head when he looked right past Kaito and Fukuda's table. Kaito's smile was unfeigned now, if not entirely _nice._

Kaito let Hakuba disappear into the crowds before he spoke. "Fukuda-san," he began. "I think I've just spotted Hotaru-ba-chan at a table back in that corner. I'm going to go say hello to her before anyone begins getting too drunk. I'll only be a moment."

"Oh, of course," Fukuda said. "I'll meet you back at our table, then?"

Kaito agreed, and, after they'd parted ways, reconstructed his hair in a quick, careless-looking gesture. He changed his gait between one step and the next. Kaito wasn't the real Kogawa-san. He would pass muster as someone other than her.

He pointed his feet in a circuitous path to Kudou's table, only to grind his teeth as he caught sight of it. There was Kudou, clear as day, and seated next to him was the current bane of Kaito's existence, Hakuba. They were chatting as if neither of them had a bigger care than entertaining themselves. The only clear nods they had to their mutual profession was that they were both carrying radios, so Kaito would hold off on calling it a professional insult, but it was damn well up there.

Fine. He knew Kudou's habits at his heists well enough. Kaito would try to get him alone once the heist had already begun, though that, depending on the rest of the police's actions, and not to mention _Hakuba's_ actions, was a bit of a crap shoot. Well, he'd do his best. If it went to hell, he might be able to circle back later.

* * *

As predicted, Kudou stuck to his habits, which was a bit of a lifesaver for Kaito. He watched from a distance as he and Hakuba debated who would go where. Kudou called the roof, which worked for Kaito. He did so love a dramatic exit.

The heist was easy from there. He slipped the necklace from around the old woman's neck, danced a merry tune with his ever persistent task force, and changed costume not once but twice more on his way out. By the time he pushed the door to the rooftop garden open to meet the gaze of a smirking Kudou, he was dressed as himself — as KID — and not a hair out of place, either. He tugged his hat brim lower by habit and strolled forward, hands in his pockets.

"One of these days," Kudou said, like a private joke between old friends, "you know I'm going to catch you."

Kaito laughed. The opening was too easy. He was — excited. Nervous, sure, but he lived for thrills. This was it, as good a moment as any. "Going to catch me, huh? I think there might be a bit of a problem, if that's the case."

Kudou cocked his head. Kaito tracked the shift in muscle tension all down his body, ready to kick or run or whatever taking Kaito down would call for. "Yeah? Nobody's untouchable. People have gotten close before, and I've gotten closest."

Kaito drew to a stop, drew a breath. "Closer than that, I think."

The confusion on Kudou's face was subtle, a faint reconfiguring of eyebrows and eyes. He started to speak again, but Kaito was too amped up to wait for him to catch up.

"In fact," he said, "I could go so far as to—" He paused, blinked hard for a moment at a strange wave of vertigo, and tried to keep it off his face. "As to say that — that you've—"

He cut himself off again with a harsh gasp for air. Kudou grabbed his elbow — when had he gotten so close? But Kaito couldn't breathe, could barely see. _Poison?_ he thought, but the thought was blurry, slipping between his fingers as the world spun. He could hear Kudou saying, "KID? KID, tell me what's wrong," but Kaito didn't have the air to reply. Gods, but what fucking timing, too. He wanted — if he was dying, he wanted Kudou to know, damnit. It wasn't fair, he wasn't ready, he needed another moment, a single breath, enough to tell him —

The world went black.

* * *

Kaito jolted up with a hard gasp. His heart was pounding a mile a minute, sounding a drum line of adrenaline in his throat. He choked and inhaled raggedly, body frantic to draw in the air it had been denied seconds before. He breathed. He goggled at the change in location — where had Kudou —

This was his bedroom.

It was dark as pitch, but that was better than having the lights on and blaring his location. He wriggled free of the tangled blankets and dropped to a crouch beside the window, ready to flee. He was — his phone! It was resting on his desk, for all the world looking like he'd left it to charge at bedtime. How had he gotten back? Had he passed out? Did Kudou know where he _lived?_ Oh, hell, had Hakuba told him where to take him? Kaito needed answers, and he needed them fast.

He snatched up his phone and unlocked it with a wince at the faint buzz. No calls, no texts. The clock told him it was two in the morning, which could've been right. He'd started the heist at 22:30 on the dot, and he didn't know how long he'd been out. But it would've taken a while to sneak him past all those cops, and why would either of them do that? It — it didn't make sense.

He opened his messaging app and a query to Jii. _Did you get out okay? Sorry I missed the rendezvous._

He opened his messaging app and drummed out a query to Jii. t Kaito had apparently swooned in the middle of his grand escape in front of one of his most dangerous opponents. It was a fucking miracle that he wasn't in a holding cell right now.

Jii didn't reply, so Kaito tapped back to the home screen after a few moments. He could check the news, see if there was anything about how he'd gotten away, if someone had let his dummy loose, maybe.

There were a few sources he preferred for tracking news on his night job. He opened the bookmarked link to their usual KID livestream and found that it was dark. Okay. Stream must've ended already. Odd, but it was pretty late. Most of their viewers would be asleep, he supposed, though he'd known them to talk on stream until daybreak.

Forgoing checking another news site, he swapped to a social media site after another quick glance around the room, confirming it was empty. He followed the account of one of KID's most prolific and analytical fans to look over her usual recap and live-posting about the heist.

There… was nothing. At the top of the page was a widget that declared it to be 20 hours and 9 minutes until the next Kaitou KID heist. In numb confusion, he scrolled down through her posts and found nothing but some excited chatter and speculation about the heist — the one he'd _just_ done — amid some back and forth with other KID fans.

Maybe there was something wrong with his phone. A weird glitch, a virus? Most viruses weren't configured for cell phones, but he didn't see what else could explain it. Kaito set his phone aside for the moment and snagged the blanket off his bed. He would try firing up his tablet to see if that gave him something more useful to go on, but first — first he would go through his house to confirm nobody was lying in wait for him.

And if it was someone who didn't know for certain he was KID, well, better to seem like a sleepy teenager up from a bad dream than a phantom thief on the prowl.

Each room he went through offered him nothing but shadows and undisturbed air. He closed each door behind him, feeling more and more bewildered, until he ended up at last in the kitchen. There was no sign of anyone else having been there. Even his clothes were still strewn in various places in the house, although he could swear he'd begrudgingly moved that sweatshirt into the hamper before the heist.

Kaito took another long breath to calm himself and chose to pour himself a glass of water. The cold taste of it helped him settle a little further, and he drank it sip by sip until it was empty and he was left clutching the blanket around his shoulders still, rubbing his forehead. Something was off. He could practically taste that something was _wrong_ , but his house offered him no clues yet.

Well. He hadn't checked the secret room yet. He could take his tablet down there after he'd gotten a better look around online.

Abandoning the glass by the sink, he dragged the blanket back up the stairs behind him, snagging the offending dirty sweatshirt along the way. The floors were cold under his bare feet, matching the way the weather was beginning to turn towards the chillier months. Even though he'd already checked and found nothing, he kept a sharp eye out, slinking along as he listened for any sound out of place — and yet, still nothing.

Back in his room he dumped the blanket on the bed and tugged the sweatshirt on, rubbing a hand through his hair and yawning. The late night was starting to tug at his mind, make it sluggish. It was always hard to sleep after a heist, but his body always knew when he'd been doing something foolhardy. He pressed the power button on the tablet and blinked hard at the sudden blast of brightness to his face.

If there was a moment to catch him off guard, that would've been it, but the house wrapped silent as a ghost around him.

The screen declared that it was November 17, and 2:29 in the morning. The stupid little countdown app he'd stuck on the lock screen informed him in bright colors that _KID-sama's heist is tonight!!_ There was even a celebratory cartoon cow to announce the words. Okay. So his tablet, too, was —

Wait.

He checked the date again. That was… No, it should've been the 18th. He was _certain_ that he'd held the heist on the 17th, and if it was half past two of the next day, then it should have been…

Something curled like dread in his stomach. Tucking the tablet under his arm, no longer caring if someone might be lurking in his house to see him do it, he turned and jumped through the portrait, forgoing the ladder in favor of getting down as fast as possible.

There, on the work table, was the mask he'd made of the young woman he'd impersonated. Beside it was the stupid little clutch he'd carried with all his makeup, and there was the wardrobe, left flung ajar the same as it had been when he'd hung up the dress.

The dress, still on its hanger, was still starched stiff and ironed crisp. Below it were the shoes, broken in to look neither brand new nor overly worn. Hesitant, Kaito reached out and touched the sleeve of the dress. The fabric was crisp under his fingers, as unmarred as if he had never worn it. The dress didn't look at all like he'd sweated in it and dropped a bite of food on the sleeve that had needing daubing off right before the heist began. Hell, he hadn't even kept ahold of all the pieces of this costume after the second disguise change. Too much to carry, not enough room for bulk, not like the suit afforded him.

The suit. It still waited for him, looking as untouched as everything else. In the pocket of the jacket collar was the monocle. Kaito cradled it in his hand and stared down at it as if it might tell him what was happening.

"What's happening to me?" he whispered to the empty spaces of the room. "What's going on?"

Both the room and the specter of his father kept their counsel, and did not reply.


	2. Sleepless

Jii texted him once morning came around, after the sun had risen and Kaito had forced himself to get up from sitting on the floor of the secret room. In the light of morning, everything felt increasingly surreal. He didn't think he could have dreamed something so vivid — so detailed — without there being some part of it that seemed illogical, in the way that the logic of dreams tended to be.

 _I'm not sure what you mean, Bou-chama,_ came Jii's reply, and Kaito bit down a sigh. He'd expected it, but it was still a bit of a kick in the teeth.

 _Sorry,_ he replied. _Think I had a weird dream. All good now._

Things were not, in fact, all good now. For one thing, he was exhausted from having been awake since two, and apparently he had a heist to run later. For another, the lights in Aoko's house were on, and he could see her moving around. She would come to bother him soon, and Kaito didn't know how to handle her cheeriness yet while feeling so out of sorts.

 _Do you need to cancel tonight?_ Jii asked, and Kaito bit down a sigh.

 _No, I'm good,_ he tapped out before turning the screen off and shoving the phone into his pocket. He muffled a yawn into his hand. He would definitely need a nap later, if he wanted to be on his game at all.

Would the heist play out the same as he remembered it? Or would the details prove to be different after all, making the first time little more than a confusing dream?

Kaito could feel in his bones that there was something more sinister at foot than a noisy unconscious, but... He didn't want to jump to conclusions. Not yet.

From outside, he heard Aoko bellow, _"KAIIITO!"_ He grumbled under his breath, standing up and taking the steps up to his bedroom three at a time to keep her from rousing the whole neighborhood.

She was clearly gearing up to shout again when he stuck his head out. "I'm up, I'm up," he yelled back. "I'll be over soon, okay?"

"Don't be too slow!" Aoko waved and vanished back inside, and Kaito knocked his head against the wall with another groan. This would be a big mess if he didn't stay on top of things.

Ten minutes later saw him changed into clean clothes, hair mostly brushed, dark circles under his eyes blotted away with concealer. Aoko waved for him to sit without turning around, busy trying not to let any of the food get cold while she wrapped up the rest. Kaito got out bowls for her and decided to test one final nail for the coffin he found himself in.

"So," he started, "how'd last night go for your dad?"

Aoko looked up finally, frowning. "How do you mean?"

"You know," he said with a practiced wave of his hand. "The heist?"

Aoko only looked at him as if he'd started speaking tongues. "Are you making fun of Aoko? Or are you just being more stupid than usual?"

"Oi, what do you mean?" he protested. "I'm being totally nice right now. I'm not saying a word about how KID-sama roasted your dad for dinner last night or anything."

Aoko stopped stirring and stared at him in silent judgment.

"Orrrrr," Kaito said slowly, "is it... is it tonight? Did I get the date wrong?"

Aoko looked relieved. "Bakaito can't read the calendar, can you?"

"Hey! I could have, I'm just saying I _didn't_. There's a difference, Ahouko."

She chased him out of the kitchen and he retreated to the table, snickering. He checked his phone — one text from Jii, which he ignored — and yeah, it was still the 17th. It was the weirdest feeling, staring down at that number. It gave him creepy chills like when he mixed up with something more dangerous than he'd expected it to be.

Well. At least it hadn't been poison.

He had breakfast with Aoko and the Inspector, both of whom discussed almost the exact same things as Kaito remembered them talking about yesterday. The only difference was the weird looks Aoko kept shooting him at how quiet he was being, and her occasional effort to make him join the conversation, which he more or less ignored. He'd make it up to her later.

"Well, thanks for breakfast," he said finally. "I didn't sleep great, so I'm going to go take a nap, okay? Don't blow up my phone or come bang on the windows, please."

Aoko just rolled her eyes and grumbled about how lazy he was for sleeping in so much extra on the weekend. Crisis averted, more or less.

Once back in his bed, though, Kaito had trouble drifting off. It was an annoying thing that happened sometimes, usually after a heist, but sometimes if he had too much on his mind for his thoughts to turn off. On particularly bad nights, he would toss and turn until he gave up and either forwent classes or napped the day away between them.

Today, though, the reason he couldn't sleep was evident enough. Aoko's bewildered expression when he'd asked about the heist was sticking in his mind's eye and giving him those same creepy shivers of having ended up in water over his head.

Whatever. It didn't matter how creepy any of it was; he needed to sleep. Kaito squeezed his eyes shut and admonished his brain to behave and let him rest. Hopefully he would have a better idea what to do when he woke up again.

* * *

Kaito did not have a better idea of what to do.

He watched the girl he'd impersonated the day before from across the room. That had gone fine yesterday — not yesterday — what he remembered doing today, but… Well, he'd had to do a lot of sitting and behaving himself while waiting for the heist to start, and the idea of making small talk with her snobby rich kid of a boyfriend _again_ sounded like it would leave him ready to vibrate right out of his disguise.

He'd use his secondary disguise — not his current one as a beverage server, obviously. He had too limited mobility when people were watching to make sure he was doing his ostensible job. The dress he'd worn yesterday as Kogawa-san was reversible, though. It was riskier, of course. He could almost hear the worried protests Jii would make if he could have seen Kaito right then, but he couldn't, so Kaito would do as he pleased.

Kaito took a bathroom break and changed costumes. The wig was the same as before, but done up in a different style, and the makeup wouldn't be the same at all. Less subtle and refined, a little more young and dramatic. The reversed dress was better suited to this kind of look, too. Kudou might still catch him out, but honestly, an early chase might be what Kaito needed to shake off the feeling of déjà vu that wouldn't stop hounding him.

He snapped his makeup kit shut and stowed it in his bag, which was the same clutch, but reversed to something with handles. Much more practical. The only thing that was obviously the same as the other version of this disguise was the shoes, but there was nothing to be done about that. It would do.

The crowded ballroom swallowed him like a wave swallowing a raindrop, and he was invisible inside it. He could already feel some of the tension starting to dissolve from the sense of anonymity alone, the way not one person here would know who he was or seek him out. It left him with the freedom to do exactly what he wanted, and what Kaito wanted right now was simple.

Hakuba got up from his chair beside Kudou with a quick word to him and started making his way to the owner of the gem _Sunrise in the Trees_ , and that was Kaito's cue to steal his way through the rest of the crowd and make quick work of borrowing the vacated chair.

"I'm sorry, is this seat taken?" he asked anxiously, checking over his shoulder. "I just need a minute. I'm really sorry."

Kudou looked up from his phone in surprise. "Ah, someone was sitting there, but he's away at the moment. Can I help you, Miss…?"

"Katsuki," Kaito said, thinking of the first time he'd witnessed Kudou — then just little Conan — in action on a case. "Katsuki Tomoko. Thank you so much. My boyfriend — " He ducked his head in embarrassment, unable to blush without it showing the shapes of his facial prosthetics. "Well, I need a moment, that's all."

"That's perfectly fine," Kudou said, though he was now scanning the people behind Kaito, presumably looking for signs of an overbearing boyfriend searching for his errant date. "I'm Kudou Shin'ichi. I won't be here too long, as the heist is starting soon, but I can sit with you until then if you need."

"Oh!" Kaito said, hiding his gasp behind a gloved hand. "Not _that_ Kudou Shin'ichi-san? I'm so sorry to take up your time. You must be so busy tonight."

He shrugged, seeming accustomed to getting surprised reactions to his name. "Like I said, I have a few minutes, Katsuki-san." He slid his phone into the pocket inside his suit jacket and fixed Kaito with that unnerving, evaluating stare of his. "You're sure you're well?"

"Oh, yes," Kaito said, staring down at his nails as if embarrassed to be the recipient of the _famous_ Kudou Shin'ichi's attention. "I don't mean to be a bother, truly. I won't be more than a moment." He glanced up, shy but curious. "If I can ask…"

His attention sharpened. Uh oh, looked like Kudou knew something was awry, here. "Yes?"

"Well — I was just wondering — what's it like, chasing that thief?" Kaito wrinkled his nose in faux feminine displeasure. "Is it frustrating, seeing him escape so much?"

Kudou sat back in his chair, gaze wandering as he considered the question. "Not as much as it might be for others. I'm not an official part of the task force, you understand, and I'm used to criminals of much more… gruesome inclinations than KID, but on the other hand, most of that type aren't trained escape artists. I enjoy a challenge now and then."

"Ooh, I see," Kaito said, flitting his gaze up from under his eyelashes before playing demure and looking away again. "So it's fun, even though he always gets away." He couldn't help himself. Kudou was adorable when he was annoyed, all wrinkled nose and scowling eyebrows.

"Well, I'd rather he didn't keep getting away." Yep, there went the eyebrows. "But I enjoy getting to collaborate with a wider team, as I usually get called in to help a few detectives or so." His gaze flitted past Kaito's head, looking for something, though Kaito wasn't sure what.

"I understand," Kaito said, nodding and tucking a dislodged strand of his wig behind his ear. "I don't really understand the whole… fuss around KID? But I suppose I could see the draw for a detective such as yourself."

That got Kudou's attention back a little more keenly than Kaito had intended. "And you don't? See the draw to KID, I mean."

Oops. Apparently he'd come off fake. Kaito shrugged, just a small movement of his shoulders. "I've never been one for celebrities, even ones that are more — unusual? — like KID."

"He's certainly something," Kudou muttered under his breath, and Kaito had to bite down a laugh. It was too easy to resist.

Still, all this was giving him an idea of how to spin the heist so it didn't go down exactly the same as he remembered. "Um, listen, Kudou-san, I was thinking…"

Now _that_ got him the narrow stare of suspicion. "Were you?"

Had Kaito actually been polite Katsuki Tomoko, he would have faltered and given up whatever it was he wanted to say in the face of that stare. As it was, Kaito only rearranged the pleats of his skirt in a nervous gesture and laced his fingers together. "Yes. I just have this feeling, you see, and I thought it might be important?" He took a quick, nervous breath and internally braced to have to make a break for it, should Kudou see right through his words, as he most likely would. "Um, about KID. You and he — "

Kaito stopped talking. His hand went out instinctively to brace himself against the table as the whole world seemed to swoop under his seat, fogging and defogging his eyesight like a warning.

"Katsuki-san?"

Kaito took another, slower breath. The feeling began to recede, and he kept breathing, but he recognized it. This was exactly what he'd felt yesterday — today, damnit — when he'd blacked out.

"I don't feel so well," he heard himself say, as if from a distance. "I…" He thrust all thoughts of how to drop hints to Kudou from his mind. The world felt less like it might turn gelatinous and swallow him whole, anyway. "I think I might need to get out of this crowd."

"Of course," Kudou said at once. "I know the building pretty well. Would you like me to show you somewhere you could lie down for a bit? There's a sitting room not far from here."

That sounded perfect, actually. Kaito was beginning to feel hemmed in. Air that wasn't being breathed by hundreds of people would help. "If you have time for it, I would — very much appreciate it. Thank you, Kudou-san. I'm sorry to be so much trouble."

"It's no trouble at all," said Kudou. Solicitous, he stayed in arm's reach, ready to help him if another dizzy attack struck. Kaito rose to his feet and took a moment to steady himself. Having him at hand to navigate the crowd was something of a help, as well. Kaito felt too unsteady to navigate without running into anyone, and wasn't that a lovely thought to have right before he was meant to start a heist?

The sitting room, as promised, was just down a hall and around the corner. Grateful, Kaito lowered himself onto a loveseat once there and shook off the distinct feeling of claustrophobia.

"Thank you," he said again finally, opening his eyes to find Kudou sitting in a chair across from him, waiting from him to center himself. "I just came over so dizzy all of a sudden. I don't know what happened."

This was one case where Kaito didn't think the truth would hurt. It wasn't like he hadn't already taken the helpless maiden act a little too far. Besides, it would appeal to Kudou's sense of ethics.

"Do you need me to get somebody for you?" He did look concerned, though Kaito suspected that Kudou still had some suspicions about whether Kaito's acting actually had been genuine or not.

"No, that's all right," said Kaito. "I think I just need a moment to rest and then I'll be feeling better. I hope I'm not coming down with anything."

Though it was too soon to claim it as a pattern, the fact that both strange dizzy spells had happened in the presence of Kudou unnerved him. Moreover, they'd both been when he was trying to talk to Kudou about, well, himself. He disliked in particular like the fact that this time he'd been able to shake off the dizzy feeling by giving up trying to tell Kudou anything, whereas last time when he'd been determined to speak his mind, the dizziness had prevailed.

Kaito had enough experience with malicious magic and strange happenstance to suspect what might be happening.

But all that would have to wait. He was still a few minutes before the beginning of his heist, after all, and that had to take priority for now.

Now, to shake Kudou's suspicions long enough for him to get himself out of this situation.

"See, you don't have to worry about me; I'm already feeling better. I suspect that being in that crowd was just a little much for my system." He pulled out his phone — his KID phone — and turned on the screen. "I think I'll text my mother and let her know that I'm not feeling well and might have to leave early."

Kudou did look assuaged by this. He nodded and leaned back in his chair. "Well, let me know if there's anything I can do. I'll have to go pretty soon to check in with the officers, but let me know if you think of anything in the next few minutes."

Kaito nodded and made a show of typing out a message on his phone, which he sent to a different burner cell of his to have proof of having sent a message at all. Just as he was changing the contact in his phone to read "Mom," someone knocked on the door.

"Kudou-kun?" The voice calling from the other side of the door was familiar, and Kaito immediately hated his life — every last moment of it that had led to this moment.

It was Hakuba.

Kudou stood to open the door. "Hey," he said. "Sorry, I had to help Katsuki-san and stepped away for a minute."

"That's fine," said Hakuba, spying into the room past Kudou. "I thought I would come let you know that Nakamori-keibu wants to see everyone before the start of the heist."

"Ah, of course," said Kudou. "I'll be right along." He gave Kaito one last perfunctory glance, though it was clear that his thoughts had already departed. "You're sure there's nothing I can get you before I go?"

Kaito waved them off with a smile. "Don't worry about me; go catch your thief."

Kudou nodded and stepped out past Hakuba, who gave Kaito one last curious look, presumably picking up on the fact that something was off, before he too stepped away and let the door shut behind him.

And Kaito was alone.

He breathed a silent sigh of relief before going over the rest of his itinerary before he had to go play his role. Obviously, he hadn't had the opportunity to tell Kudou to hang back and meet him after the heist, but with the way things were going Kaito wasn't sure that was a good plan anyway. Last time – if it had truly been a last time — he had run into trouble at the end of the heist, when Kudou caught up to him.

Though, of course, things might not play out the same way, now that he had affected the way Hakuba and Kudou interacted before all the excitement went down. All the same, he would feel better changing up the plan to account for the risk of things going the way he remembered. He did not want to find himself keeling over out in plain sight once again. Nor did he want to wake up in his own bed again, back to this morning.

Kaito had seen plenty of crappy TV shows with time loops, and though he wasn't ready to jump to conclusions, this had the nasty feeling of someone's shitty idea of trying to teach him a lesson or something.

And if somebody was using magic to teach him a lesson, there was only one person among his acquaintances that it would be.

Of course there was always the risk of a new player on the stage or the gem having unprecedented properties, but Kaito was pretty sure he knew what was afoot. He would test the bounds of what he was experiencing first, but then...

Then, he would have a talk with his old classmate Akako.

* * *

After that, the heist was simple. He could have conducted this kind of thing in his sleep. He had plenty of practice in the last few years. Kaito nabbed the jewel right out from under Nakamori's nose and, as usual, made his break for it while the police buffooned about, despite all the effort he'd gone into teaching them to expect the unexpected.

And while usually the double threat of Hakuba and Kudou working together would have been enough to put him on edge, he already happened to know their strategy from the day before, and it didn't take more than a few glances to confirm that they were sticking to that today. He side-stepped the both of them, chose a new route all together, and was out the window before anybody could so much as blink.

He didn't feel like putting on a show right now.

Jii, of course, was concerned by his deviation from the plan they had set beforehand, but it was a simple enough matter to put him at ease with a few words. It always made Kaito feel a little sick at heart to know how easy it was to get Jii to do what he wanted. Especially when tricking him relied on how well Kaito knew him.

He went home alone, having dismissed Jii to return to the Blue Parrot and his own home above it. Same as ever, Kaito shut the front door behind him, kicked off his shoes, and found himself on his own with a stomach full of adrenaline and a mind racing with thoughts.

Long practice took him through the next few steps. He descended by ladder into the secret room, put away all the equipment that he would use again in the future, and destroyed what little he couldn't reuse.

He was tired. It had been a long time since he'd woken with a start at 2 a.m., and it was approaching that hour yet again, with him still only subsisting on a few hours of sleep.

But... he wanted to see 2 a.m. roll around for himself, see if time would continue pouring down past him in a linear fashion as it ought.

He made himself some tea and a snack, his stomach not up for much more than that, and sat himself down to wait.

It was already long past one in the morning. He had no new messages on his civilian phone, which was good. He whiled away the remaining minutes of the hour by slipping through the news reports on KID — the same ones he had expected to see this morning. His favorite bloggers were already compiling their notes and posting, and of course the ordinary news stations loved him as ever. Normally he got a little bit of a kick out of seeing the way they talked about him, but tonight... Tonight none of it could touch him. There was a cold knot of dread in his stomach that he couldn't shake.

Eventually, Kaito sat motionless in his own bed, staring at the clock on his phone as it ticked down.

Finally — finally — the digital clock blinked over from 01:59 to 02:00.

And yet Kaito didn't feel relieved at all.

So it wasn't a time loop. Or if it was, it wasn't the kind he'd expected. That was challenging, and he didn't like being in the eye of a mystery without knowing what game was afoot.

He especially didn't like unknown magic hanging around him without having a clue what it wanted from him.

The tea had done its trick to help settle him, despite the whirling concerns in his head. And he was just... so tired. It had been a very, very long day.

He set his phone aside and turned out the lights. Enough was enough. There was nothing he could do, not at this hour anyway, and he wanted to know if he would wake up tomorrow. The only way to know that information was to sleep.

Even though at the moment, sleep felt a million miles away.

Still. He would try, and he would face what came when he woke as best he knew how.


	3. Strange Magics

Kaito woke up, and it was Monday: an entirely new day.

To have experienced what felt like an entire extra day was disconcerting, to say the least. He couldn't shake the feeling that loomed over him, murky and threatening. He had to track down Akako and talk to her today, even if he had to drag her off to get her away from her crowds of admirers.

He and Aoko walked to the train station together. She was her usual chatty self, a bright spark in an otherwise uninspiring morning. Kaito could tell that she had noticed something was wrong, though, and that was a problem. He disliked leaving her worrying about him.

"Aoko..." he started finally, wondering at the logic behind trying to say something, but not able to resist.

She immediately gave him her full attention, complete with the tiny wrinkle in her brow that she always had when she was trying not to look concerned. Kaito counted out his words in his head, measuring them, before deciding to go ahead and at least give it a shot.

"Something kind of weird happened yesterday," he said, studying the pavement under their feet as they walked.

"You can tell Aoko anything," she said earnestly, and Kaito felt a pang. He wondered if she knew or suspected just how much he'd lied to her, the last few years.

"I guess that morning I felt — " His throat closed. He cleared it and tried again. "Uh, I felt — it was like — "

Nothing. The words wouldn't pass from his mind to the air. He couldn't so much as get the phrase déjà vu out of his mouth. A swell of panic filtered through from his stomach, and he swallowed it down. Aoko was looking more alarmed by the minute.

" — like this weird sense of horror crushing down on me when I realized I would have to get up and deal with your ugly face again," he said, tossing his words towards something dramatic and insincere in tone. She immediately scowled at him.

"Aoko can tell you're lying! Kaito, just tell me."

A thread of hysterical amusement bit into him, and he brushed it away. Would that he could, he thought. Gods. He'd love to be able to say something, and took a moment to try again, reaching for different words, but all he managed to say in the end was, "I don't know. I think Akako might be up to something again."

Aoko sighed. "You _always_ think that, Kaito." Her tone was closer to safe levels of exasperation, though he knew she would keep the worry holed up inside of her where she thought he wouldn't notice. Kaito felt a little sickened by how much he'd let her squirrel away confusion and the lies he had to feed her.

"Yeah, it might be nothing. But still. You never know with that witch."

Aoko rolled her eyes, and swatted him, and shoved him down the subway steps ahead of her, and all was right in the world. Or at least — something close enough to it.

Now he just had to track the red witch down and force her for once in her life to not talk in riddles, because Kaito thought he might scream if he had to decode more of her smug nonsense when she was pulling shit like this. The back of his neck prickled with disquiet or paranoia; when he checked behind himself, there was no one there.

* * *

Oh, it was Akako all right. She came by the Blue Parrot and sat watching him all through his shift. Though she had come by regularly enough since Kaito had become an official employee, to socialize or acquire victims for rituals or whatever it was she did in her free time, she tended to ignore him unless she was plotting something.

Kaito plotted how to get her alone, or at least alone enough that he could chew her out for whatever bullshit was happening. If it was even still happening, that is, as he'd woken up fine this morning.

The trouble was, no matter how back to normal the world ever seemed, there was always another trick waiting in the wings, ready to fuck everyone over.

He did finally get his chance once his break rolled around. She dismissed her hoodwinked flock as Kaito approached, and he seized the opportunity.

"What did you do, witch?" Kaito demanded in a low tone.

Akako looked up at him and laughed that laugh of hers that meant she was up to no good. Kaito immediately felt vindicated in every mean thought he'd had about her in the last 48 hours. Or 24 hours times two, whatever.

"Me?" she asked, smiling that terrible smile of hers. "Are you sure that it wasn't _you_ who did something?"

Kaito reminded himself not to grind his teeth, lest he regret his youthful choices even more than he already did in old age. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. The — you know. You did something. You did something and I can't talk about it, but you know exactly what I mean."

"Maybe I did, and maybe I didn't." Her smile had always looked like a shark's smile to him, something that hid endless rows of teeth. "But there have always been strange magics that always cling to you, Kuroba-kun. Perhaps they have waxed to their inevitable full force."

"I know the difference between prestidigitation and the kind of things you work with. If something has _waxed_ then I'm inclined to think it's your fault." He wished he could force the answers from her skull with the strength of his glare.

"Well, if you're quite as sure as you say you are, is there something you've come to ask me for?"

So that was the play. How utterly, disgustingly predictable. Kaito made a point of rolling his eyes. "I know better than to trust any deal you'd offer. So what is it, my immortal soul in exchange for you lifting whatever weird trap you've decided to lay?"

"Oh, my. Getting right to it then, are we? Eager, aren't we?" She leaned forward on her bar stool, unintimidated and smug and secure in her plan. Kaito was certain she was the culprit now. Of course he knew she'd spin any other spellcasters' magic to her ends if it meant getting to snare him, but this was classic Akako behavior. He stared down at her with folded arms, refusing to bend.

"Name your price, Akako, and if you want me to agree to compromise on anything, you had better make your offer reasonable."

"Ah, sorry to interrupt!" a girl's voice said, startling Kaito into looking over. "Hi, Akako-san! Is this an okay time? I can come back, but it'll only be a minute…?"

Akako immediately ignored him in favor of the girl. Kaito leaned against the table and tried not to grind his teeth. "Hi, Emiko-san. How are you? How is Taro-san?"

"Oh, he's doing well, we're both well." A faint dusting of pink colored her face as she smoothed down her skirt. Kaito listened in with a little more curiosity. Most partnered women tended to dislike Akako for her habit of stealing their boyfriends' attention, but Emiko wasn't showing any signs of animosity. It reminded him of something, but what? He wracked his memory while they talked.

The memory returned to him all at once. He knew exactly why Emiko's boyfriend might be immune to the siren song that Akako emit, because he had seen it happen before in high school, when one of her usual posse showed up one day and no longer gave her a second glance.

Emiko and her boyfriend Taro were soulmates. The bond trumped her powers.

Kaito waited for their conversation to end, aware of the dwindling minutes of his break in the back of his mind. He and Emiko bowed a quick goodbye to each other before she darted off with another apology.

Then, he fixed his renewed glare on Akako.

"This is because of Kudou, isn't it?"

At least she didn't try to lie. "You know my feelings on boys who think they can wander out of my influence, KID-san."

"Don't call me that, witch. You can't control people who have solidified their soulmate bonds. That's why." Kaito had never felt more sure of anything in his life. It all made too much sense. The suddenness with which this had happened — the fact that all of this had happened after he talked with Aoko in her earshot about how he was planning to talk to his soulmate... "Did you even know who he was before now? It's his life you're screwing with too, you realize."

"Not for certain," she said, "but now you've handed the information over with no fuss at all. Usually, it's a hassle to coax anything useful out of you."

Screw it. Kaito ground his teeth. "I know you know you can't stop me forever. How does this work? Do I go back in time whenever I try to talk to him? Or is it something else?"

"You are the conductor of life as you choose to lead it. Your fate rests in your hands, on whether you can find your way through the labyrinth."

Kaito laughed, aware of the brittle edge to his tone. "Wouldn't that makes you the monster that eats innocents? How appropriate."

She smiled back, winsome and lovely. "That's alright, Kuroba-kun. If I'm a monster, then I'm in good company."

* * *

Kaito resolved to conduct exhaustive tests on the bounds of her spell.

Was it only one day that repeated? Would he always return to that Sunday? How far could he go? How much could he hint at to Kudou before the spell knocked him on his ass? He intended to find out.

To that end, he took a trip to Beika.

The end to his first year of higher education was rushing towards him, and he knew the students of Touto University, where both Kudou and Aoko attended, were feeling the same. Kudou had been back as himself for some months, close to a year now, enough time to have caught up to his classmates. Kaito wondered, not for the first time, what his long-term plans were. Would he stay in Tokyo after school completed? There was so much he didn't know — so much he wanted to know.

And now there was this, standing in the way.

Kaito did have some lines he preferred not to cross, and breaking into an associate's home while they weren't there to receive him was one. He awaited Kudou's return to his home inside the gate but not indoors, texting Aoko to let her know he wouldn't be over for dinner in the meantime. He wore his typical reconnaissance clothes. There was something comforting about them — the illusion of anonymity, or maybe the familiarity of wearing them while seeking out Kudou. If nothing else, they did still make him feel like a cool supervillain.

He had timed things well. He only waited some ten or fifteen minutes before he heard voices signaling the return of his quarry. A familiar voice, the girl from Kudou's little pack of nightmares (the one whose claim to youth Kaito had always found dubious at best), wished Kudou a quick farewell before vanishing into the depths of her own home. Kudou rattled the gate for a moment as he unlocked it (Kaito had opted to hop the fence rather than pick the lock). He straightened up from his crouch among the various plant life at the same moment Kudou came into eye shot.

There was a long, startled pause as they regarded each other.

"I doubt my mother keeps any of her more interesting jewelry in this country," Kudou finally said.

Kaito laughed, feeling the familiar safety of his persona sinking into embrace him. "I'm not here in professional capacity."

"No, I don't suppose you are." Kudou strode past him and headed toward the front door. "Shall we?"

Emboldened by Kudou not yet hollering for the police, Kaito followed him.

Once inside, he helped himself to a spare pair of slippers as Kudou wandered deeper into the house. "Tea? Or is this not that kind of conversation?"

Kaito wondered exactly what kinds of conversations with an infamous thief Kudou thought called for tea. "Either way is fine. Don't go to any trouble for me."

He supposed there were a few ways to interpret that particular instruction.

Kudou did make tea, which Kaito felt a little bad about, as he anticipated that he would be tumbling into another dizzy spell sooner rather than later, if his theory was correct. Even so, it was... easy to sit together in comfortable silence and drink tea as he gathered his thoughts. He shouldn't have been so surprised by how relaxed they were with each other. They had always gotten along better than they should have. Still, he'd spent very little time with Kudou himself since he'd returned from being Conan at all.

"So, it's like this," he said finally. "I have some things to discuss with you, but it's difficult to go about doing so."

Kudou leaned in, alight with interest. "Have you run into some kind of trouble? Something you saw as KID, and thus can't go to the police with?"

It was an entirely predictable assumption, and Kaito huffed out a short laugh. "No, nothing like that, unfortunately. I wish it was so simple. I'd be spoiled for choice if that were the case. Sometimes it seems like I'm doomed to drown from detective inundation."

Kudou snorted, and Kaito was pleased to have made him laugh. "So am I, but you don't see me complaining. Would you be more at ease if you were drowning in thieves?"

Kaito shrugged. "Depends on the type of thief. I've met some very nice ones, but the rest that I've met have been... mostly cutthroat."

Kudou nodded. "I could see how that would be true."

Kaito shifted to sit cross-legged. "Yeah. Anyway, I'm not here about a crime. I'm here about... Well, something more to do with you, actually." Okay. He didn't feel too bad so far. A little dizzy? But it was hard to tell if he was actually feeling it or if it was placebo.

Kudou's eyebrows went up. "About me?"

Kaito's smile was wry. "I expect that's a little bit of an odd thing to hear from me. We do go back a few years, though. Especially if you count the clock tower heist."

"Huh, that one. That was... a while ago, wasn't it? Longer than I'd realized. I was barely sixteen back then. Seems like a lifetime ago after… everything that happened."

"Me too. Sixteen, I mean." Kudou looked appropriately taken aback by this unprecedented sharing of personal information, and Kaito felt the need to justify himself. "What? It's not like you didn't know. Or rather, it was evident that you'd guessed."

"A hypothesis is still different from confirmed fact. Why are you here, KID?"

Kaito took another slow sip of tea, buying himself a moment to decide what he wanted to test first. "Like I said, it's about you, but that's not all of it. I...suppose in some ways it's about the understanding that we've had." Oh, there it was for sure. His vision was turning foggy at the edges. So, he was getting too close to discussing them having a relationship of any sort, then. She hadn't left him much wiggle room to work with, had she? "It's not... As I said, it's not a matter of crime or something similar. It's more... Did you realize it was me? At the heist, the girl. Katsuki-san."

Kudou set down his cup with a slow, deliberate clink. "I didn't know, but as I said before, hypothesis isn't the same thing as knowledge. I knew something wasn't right about her, and if it hadn't been a heist, I would have pushed harder to figure out what it was that was hitting my radar. I looked for her after, but wasn't too surprised to find her long gone. Even if she hadn't been you, it was unlikely that I would have run into her again."

Kaito nodded. "Makes sense." He, too, followed suit and set down his teacup. "I invented her spontaneously. I was supposed to impersonate someone else, but I repurposed my disguise to try to come talk to you about... this."

The woozy feeling threatened, and he took a pause and a deep breath to ward it off. "Not that I was able to get into it at the time. And I don't think I'll get to be able to do it now either. Meitantei, I, I had intended to talk to you even before all of this happened, and I have to stay that I'm not too happy about how hard it's apparently going to be to get to the point."

He chanced a glance up, and found Kudou gazing at him with intense scrutiny. Well, that was good. It would be hard for anyone to figure out what it was he was dancing around. Frankly, he was rather relying on the fact that Kudou was no ordinary person. If he had been a little less known to pierce right to the heart of matters long left turn to dust, Kaito was sure he would be despairing his chances of success.

"So, there's something preventing you from being able to speak openly." Kudou's gaze shifted to the windows, and Kaito felt an immediate need to dissuade him from that line of thinking.

"Nobody's watching us, to my knowledge. Or, if there is, it wouldn't be someone that would be simple to stop if they wanted to hurt us. And I don't mean in the mob boss sense. This must be completely incomprehensible, sorry. It would be a lot easier if I could get even a little closer to the reason I've been — " He tried to shore himself up against the table as the dizziness settled over him like a shroud. " — Why I've been seeking you out. It's — there's nobody else that I would — it's _you_ , Kudou — "

And that was that. As if from a great distance, he felt himself slumped forward against the table, upsetting his teacup. Of all the inane thoughts to follow him into the encroaching darkness the one he would remember later was feeling sorry that he might have stained the rug with tea, even if it was undone in the same moment that it happened.

* * *

It was 2 a.m., and Kaito was sitting up with a start.

At least this time he had a sense of what was happening, and didn't terrify himself with paranoia. He double-checked the time and date on his phone and confirmed that it was, in fact, Sunday the 17th, the very early morning preceding his heist.

What a mess.

He didn't want to think about how much it would suck to go longer than a few days, thinking he was making progress, only to be reset back to this moment.

But overall, he felt strangely calm. His body knew that it was too early for any kind of plans or plotting, and with a lack of adrenaline to propel him into hours of wakefulness, he laid himself back down, reoccupied the warm spot in his blankets, closed his eyes, and sank back into a dream world.

* * *

Unfortunately, dream worlds were much more simple than reality.

The truth was, Kaito had no idea how to go about fixing the hell of a situation that Akako had thrust him into.

His best guess was that if Kudou recognized their soul bond for what it was, having a stable, mutual connection would prevent Akako from screwing with them further. However, this theory was, as Kudou would have put it, a hypothesis, and not solid fact. Kaito suspected that Kudou's usual approach to hypotheses in need of proving was to gather evidence until no doubt remained, but Kaito wasn't him, and didn't have the patience for wrangling petty witches into telling him how to break their spells.

In all honesty, the idea of having to deal with Akako right now set him so on edge that he abandoned the course of action as soon as he had conceived of it.

So, instead, Kaito decided to continue testing the bounds of the curse.

His first test he ran at the heist itself, since he had to do his thieving thing anyway, and he figured there were only so many variations on it he could pull before he tired of it completely. For the first time, rather than do his best to avoid Hakuba, he sought him out instead.

"Is that Kudou Shin'ichi you were sitting with a minute ago? That famous detective guy?"

Hakuba reflexively glanced over his shoulder to where Kudou was still sitting. "Ah, yes, sometimes we work together as colleagues against KID. Why do you ask?"

Kaito hid a smile behind a gloved hand. "It's just... Well! I was wondering if you would pass on a message to him on my behalf."

"It would depend on what the message was. He's a busy man; I'm sure you understand."

Kaito nodded in agreement. "Of course, but I'm sure you'll see why this message is important. You see," and this was the part where things could fall apart even without the curse, as matters of soulmates were generally considered something to be discussed only with family and close friends, "I think we — he and I — might be — "

No dice. At least Kaito would be spared the humiliation of Hakuba remembering him swooning onto the floor in front of him.

* * *

2 a.m. again, and time for the next strategy.

* * *

Kaito composed the note ahead of time. He didn't bother to make it particularly elaborate, just a simple _I think we're soulmates_ on unlined paper, folded into a tall and narrow rectangle so that it could be invisible in his sleeve. Though he tried to avoid the lure of optimism, he couldn't help the way his stomach soared when he managed to pen the words without repercussion.

From there, of course, everything was straightforward. Kaito had planted many an item on people in his illustrious career as a thief, though rarely someone as observant as Kudou. Still, he was confident in his skills.

He chose to do it while still in his disguise as a beverage server, for a change. Though they all had specific routes they were meant to circle, it wasn't difficult to deviate out of it without notice and make his way to where Kudou was chatting with Suzuki Sonoko. He brushed past the pair, who seemed to be having some kind of quiet, passive aggressive argument, and slipped the note into Kudou's jacket pocket.

Kaito didn't have so much as a second to determine whether he had noticed anything before the dizziness hit him so hard that he dropped his platter of empty alcohol glasses, many of which shattered and jabbed into his skin as he fell to his hands and knees on top of them.

* * *

2 a.m., and he had a slight change in approach to test. He grabbed his phone without turning on the lights and opened his message app to his last conversation with Aoko. He typed out, _Kudou Shin'ichi is my soulmate,_ hit send, then dropped it onto the mattress beside his pillow and closed his eyes again to keep sleeping.

He was jolted awake much later by severe, nauseating dizziness that turned his vision gray, and then black, before fading away to reveal the ceiling of his bedroom in the middle of the night. Again _._

So. He could send the message, but she couldn't read it without triggering the reset.

Kaito gritted his teeth and ignored the irritation that swelled in him. He hadn't even managed to wake up before the loop was cut short again, but he did his best to go to sleep again despite the anxious thoughts and theories that chased each other in circles around in his head like a little never ending game of thief and detective. He would need the rest, as annoying as it was to spend what felt like a whole day sleeping, to have the brainpower to make a new plan in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With regards to Akako: 
> 
> In the MK manga and show canon, she is shown to have little to no regard for emotional or sexual boundaries. While this fic will not go into more than the most surface elements of the sexual consent violations she has the capability of, the _romantic_ consent violations will feature in greater detail. I believe this fic is in line with her canonical characterization as a future for her where she did not learn and grow from her mistakes. 
> 
> That said, I wrote this fic from a place of liking her as a character. I have written and plan to write fic where she has made different choices and becomes better at respecting individual autonomy and boundaries.


	4. Stretch

Kaito awoke, and for the first time since he looked at little Conan and thought, _I wonder…_ he was certain he could feel something foreign tugging at his heart.

He sat up slowly and took stock. He was in his room, light streaming in from behind the blinds. Everything appeared to be a perfectly ordinary Sunday morning. The only thing out of place was the strange, almost squirming sensation of a soul bond nagging at his attention.

The longer he paid attention to it, the more it began to recede back into complacency, but he rubbed at his chest with a fist nonetheless as he thought it over.

Most likely, he decided, it was the fact that he'd spent the last four — no, five days trying to draw Kudou's attention to the bond in one way or another. It was different from merely going about from day to day while knowing that the bond was there. He was actively trying to push it towards full fruition. It made logical sense that the bond would notice his efforts and respond in turn.

Less logically, though…

Unfulfilled soul bonds were known to be somewhat hazardous to one's health. There were laws that allowed prison inmates to solidify their bonds for that very reason. Without meeting the necessity for _mutual_ acknowledgement, people could be driven half-mad trying to resist the overpowering riptide that drew them towards their partner.

Before planes, there were stories of people who traveled by ship to other countries or smaller islands, only to have their soulmate drown trying to swim after them. Kaito disliked the fact that he recognized that impulse in the phantom pull he was feeling.

Maybe… maybe it was time to test a different boundary of the snare Akako was trying to herd him into.

He retrieved his phone, irresolute for a minute, before thumbing open Jii's contact information. _I'm feeling sick,_ he typed. _Don't think I can do tonight. Can you cancel for me? I'm not up to par and I don't want to get you or anyone else sick._

Kaito hesitated for a long moment before sending the message. He'd only cancelled one other heist before, and that was due to a typhoon. He knew that if he regretted doing it, he could just reset the day, but… It bothered him to do it for such a personal reason.

Not to mention he didn't enjoy lying to Jii any more than absolutely necessary.

Sure enough, Jii called him only a few minutes later. Kaito cringed before picking up.

"Kaito-bou-chama? You've taken ill?" Jii's voice was as creased with worry as his hands were with wrinkles.

Kaito affected a congested, strained tone. "Um, yeah. Woke up feeling like crap. It's, ah, it sucks, but… Well, what can you do?" He made sure his laugh came out as though he were aiming for nonchalance and yet not quite able to reach it. "Sorry, Jii-chan."

While Jii fussed into his ear about whether he should come by or bring some soup and Kaito deftly reassured him, his gaze was drawn to the window. The lights next door were on, and probably had been for some time. Aoko was a habitual early riser, though Kaito knew she secretly enjoyed sleeping in as much as he did.

He could bother her about hanging out later. She'd be in a pretty cheerful mood once she heard that KID had cancelled, after all. Might as well try to salvage some of her goodwill, even though he might end up wiping all this away again soon after.

Jii finally agreed not to drop by, and Kaito agreed he would stay in and rest so that he wouldn't have to miss class if he didn't have to, and they hung up. He dropped his phone onto the bed with a sigh and paused to stretch, arms extended up and rising onto tiptoe to try and brush the ceiling. No dice, but if he jumped he could slap a hand against it. He lowered back down to flat feet with another sigh. In another life, he could've been an actual athlete, a gymnast or something. Not have had to worry about this kind of bullshit.

Then again, he didn't think he would have made a very good soulmate for Kudou if he had been ordinary.

Okay. That was more than enough sulking. He would have a normal day, hang out with his best friend, and consider seeing how long Akako would let the loop run.

And also how long he could stand to go, knowing he would have to start all over again.

* * *

His afternoon with Aoko was bizarrely, painfully nice. They did homework for their classes while sprawled on the floor. He had been right when he'd guessed that cancelling the heist would make her happy. It made something sick and leaden in his stomach sink a little lower each time she laughed.

When she actually asked if he was disappointed, Kaito just shrugged. "I didn't feel great when I woke up this morning," better to keep his lies consistent, after all, "so I doubt I would have gone anyway. Wouldn't want to catch a cold. I'm sure KID-sama will be back soon, you know? Maybe he twisted an ankle or something. He's taken breaks and come back before." Like when Jii threw his back out for a few months. That had been a rough stretch.

Aoko scowled and stuck her tongue out. "That stupid thief, inconveniencing everyone last minute like this," she complained. "Dad still had to go into work and everything, but he said he'd be home earlier than normal. You'll stay for dinner, won't you?"

"Yeah, sure," he said, making sure to look like he was casually concentrating on his homework. "I can help cook, if you want."

In his peripheral vision, Aoko lit up. He swallowed against the sudden nausea of how easy it was to make things better between them. The gap remained too vast to bridge when their worlds had split apart.

(And wouldn't it be easier if he had Shin'ichi? If he could pass off some of his secrecy as being in the flush of a new relationship and having spent time to track him down? If he had something easy, something normal _,_ to talk about with her?)

"Aoko should lock you out; you'll burn the house down." She nudged him with one of her feet from where she'd tucked them half under her, grinning like a little devil.

"Will not. We were nine _,_ Ahouko, has it ever happened again? No?" He nudged her back hard enough that she toppled to the side even as she kicked at him again, giggling, and Kaito wished it was still socially acceptable for them to wrestle like tussling puppies the way they'd done when they were little.

After a few more well-placed elbows and feet, they settled down again, both studiously contemplating their work to avoid the accidental eye contact that would set them off into giggles again. Kaito chewed on the back of his pen as he stared through the page, considering how long he thought was reasonable to try going without resetting. A week? That seemed fair, and would land him on a weekend again, which was convenient. He'd have the time to think it over without juggling any of the demands his usual weekdays insisted on.

Feeling more resolved with a time limit in mind, Kaito pushed his homework aside. "Come on, let's go do something. It's a lovely day, it's the weekend, we shouldn't let ourselves waste away indoors when the whole world awaits us."

Aoko looked up, wrinkling her nose. "I thought you had a term paper due."

"Sure, sure." He waved a hand in dismissal. "I have plenty of time for that." If only she knew how true that was. "I got a good bit of it done already. My grades won't suffer over a quick trip to get snacks, promise. Let's go let's go let's gooooo."

Aoko heaved a deep, put upon sigh. "Don't blame Aoko when you have to cram extra credit work at the end of term." But still, she got up, rolling her eyes and reaching for her sweater.

Kaito rocked on his toes, feeling more energized then he'd been for a few days' worth of time. "So, what are you doing this week? We should do something. Something other than me coming over to mooch off your cooking."

Aoko frowned at him, still doing up the buttons on her cardigan. "Weren't you going to go talk to your soulmate this week? Won't you be busy?"

He froze for a second, having forgotten that from her perspective, he'd only told her about Kudou yesterday. "Uh," he hedged. "Yeah, don't worry, I've got plans. Big plans. For next weekend, maybe. Besides, I'll always have time for my best friend."

Aoko looked deeply suspicious of his haphazard lying.

"What are you giving me that look for? Trust me, I'm not going over the top. I'm trying to make a good impression on the guy, remember? No fake limbs that break off and spew blood everywhere when we shake hands."

Aoko groaned and Kaito could hear her muttering under her breath all the way out the door and into the street.

* * *

Kaito was definitely going to have to reset this go around.

He'd been intending to leave things open for the possibility of success and moving on with his life, but things weren't quite going to plan. For one, true to Aoko's dire predictions, Kaito failed to get his term paper completed on time. Between seeing Akako at the grocery store of all places and subsequently spending the next hour trying to get rid of her, continuing to wake up to a phantom ache in his chest, and the news having a field day with Kaitou KID cancelling a heist, he'd been distracted. Not to mention having to deal with Hakuba turning up after the called off heist to make sure he wasn't dead — or worse, willing to give up his secrets.

When he'd had a heart-stopping moment of realizing the deadline for his paper was a cheery 10 minutes away, Kaito had given the whole thing up as a bad job. If he'd already screwed up that bad, may as well throw in the towel and admit he would have to reset.

But not before he saw it through.

It was Thursday. When he woke up on Sunday morning, he would see how he was feeling and where things stood. Ordinarily, he'd be spending the weekend after a heist stealing his things back out of police storage or retrieving anything he'd stashed the week before, and it was odd to not have to worry about that.

Some of the antsy, itchy feeling might have been from wondering what Kudou was up to, though.

He found it difficult to be bothered to try at all when he knew none of it mattered. He could tell Hakuba he was Chat Noir, go for a stroll in full uniform, blow off classes all week, all without any real consequences. It didn't make for a very good trial of whether he could stretch the loop enough for it to snap. He was just waiting for the time he'd decided was ideal for resetting, not trying to avoid resetting at all. It was supposed to be a test of whether he could stand the strain of continuing on as normal, but he'd kind of screwed that one up. He didn't actually want his life messed up by dumb mistakes he'd made while forgetting to make his choices matter.

In all likelihood, he would have to run the test again if he really wanted to know the answer. Do the week over, for real this time, make the days count and see if anything was affected by him acting as though the magic had no sway over his actions.

Or, since he'd already come this far, would he have to go longer than a week? Could her magic tell how long he'd been stuck in the loop? When he'd seen Akako on Tuesday, she had given no real sign that she knew the particulars of what he was up to. It was equally possible that she was looping right along with him or that she only knew that she had cast a spell which was presumably affecting him.

Why did magic have to be so bullshit?

Kaito was lying on his back on the couch, leg slung over the armrest, scrolling through his phone. Technically speaking, he could call her. He'd had her number since they were 16, after all. But as time had gone on and she'd shown no sign of giving up on her obsession with ensnaring KID in her weird dude harem magic, he'd disliked relying on her for anything more and more. Not that he'd ever given her much room to get away with anything when it came to him, but her moments of being helpful didn't outweigh the crap that came with it.

Akako's number wasn't the only number in his phone that he rarely had cause to use. Without even thinking about it, he had opened up Kudou's contact information. This wasn't even his KID phone. He only had the contact here for total dire emergencies that trumped his need to keep his identity secret.

And, still, he couldn't keep himself from wanting to thumb open a text. If nothing he did right now mattered in the long run...

It was still stupid. And it would ruin the test even more if he gave in and sought out Kudou of his own volition. Not that he wasn't planning to reset anyway, but. t

 _Stop thinking about it,_ he scolded himself, turning his phone off and flipping it over for good measure.

He needed a distraction.

* * *

"Since you seem to have no intention of listening to me, I'll ask again: Why the hell are you here?"

Kaito so rarely got to hear Hakuba exasperated enough to swear. It was always so funny to push him enough to make something a little less controlled poke through.

"Researching," he said, drawing a casual finger down the page. Kaito lay sprawled in the midst of all the books he'd pilfered out of Hakuba's library. Resting his head on his palm again, he kicked his feet back and forth in the air as he read.

"You realize how suspicious breaking into my home is, yes? And _what_ are you researching? If you're using my books to plan a heist, I swear — "

"Shhhh," Kaito said, eyeing a diagram that had caught his eye. "This is a library. You have to be quiet. And I didn't break in, sheesh. Your housekeeper let me in, of course. Just between us, I'm pretty sure she was excited to see that you had an old school friend coming to visit."

That got Hakuba to splutter himself into embarrassed silence. Okay, the friend jab might have been a little too pointed. It wasn't Hakuba's _fault_ that he was a pretentious ass sometimes.

"So, what do you think?"

"What do I think of what." Yeah, oops, that was the flat tone of bruised feelings.

"All this shit." Kaito made a vague, expansive gesture with his free hand. "Time travel, string theory, parallel universes."

He could hear Hakuba take slow breaths to keep his cool. "Time travel is unlikely to be possible, though I hold to the belief that time is much less linear and more malleable than most think of it. What is time, really, but complex version of gravity?"

"Sure, sure," Kaito said, loudly turning a page. "But theoretically — "

Hakuba took another slow breath, followed by the sound of him collapsing back into one of the sturdy but comfortable chairs that littered the room like the books Kaito was currently desecrating with his presence. This room was much nicer than the rest of the house, he decided. Nowhere near as sterile and cold.

"In theory, fine. But in practicality? _Maybe_ we may someday find it possible to go backward, but to progress forward through non-linear time? The universe does not exist in the mind of a sole single individual, no matter what philosophers rhapsodize about. How could one person move through the fabric of time when it is the collective that holds reality? Objectivity does not exist.

"In that sense, I'm more inclined to the theories of how parallel universes could mirror quantum entanglement. Though I continue to doubt humans as we know ourselves to be could travel between universes, perhaps someday humanity may be able to replicate the effects of such phenomena with human subjects. But for parallel worlds to exist alongside us? I don't see why not.

"That said, the probabilities of branching paths might all be crushed to oblivion once a human mind observes the whole of it, rendering the whole experiment pointless." Hakuba shrugged in his peripheral vision. "Why do you ask?"

Ha. Finally a polite method of inquiry. Kaito flipped another page. "I'm curious, that's all," he said. "No ulterior motives at play. I've recently — " He picked his words with care, feeling his way around the edges of the block in his mind. "I've been considering what the effects of something like time travel might look like. Would there only ever be one path, in the end, with the other options _crushed,_ as you said, into one linear path, leaving the others to exist only in individual memory?"

Kaito paused to think that over. He thought he sounded clear enough, and didn't make him sound as crazy as, "I'm trapped in a time loop," would have, so he continued. "But — is that science? Or have we crossed into magic?"

"Magic." Hakuba's tone was flat.

"Yeah. You know, witches and spells and, I don't know, demons? That kind of shit. Not the good kind of magic."

"I don't believe there's any such thing."

Kaito wished with a dark fervency to transfer to a parallel world where Akako had demonstrated her magic beyond any possible doubt. Unfortunately, no alternate dimension came to swallow this one and take its place. "Theoretically, then. And, come on, I know you've seen Akako pull some weird shit."

That got him a more thoughtful pause, if only because Hakuba was incapable of not considering a theoretical question posed to him.

"I think... I think everything is a matter of science. Physics we don't yet comprehend, a paradigm of reality beyond current understanding. It's already known fact that there are things in the universe so large that science as we know it suggests they shouldn't be able to exist at all. Does that not feel like a kind of magic, these things so beyond ordinary comprehension?" Another pause, filled by the sound of Hakuba drumming his fingers on a table. "But in the end, we know that they are explicable by science — it's merely science we don't yet know the functions of."

"But — "

"And Koizumi-san," Hakuba continued over him, "to me, is an example of that. She manipulates the world and reality in a way that I do not understand. In addition, she refuses to allow these abilities to be studied scientifically, and I hold her decision on this higher than my curiosity."

"Fair enough," Kaito decided. He'd love to see Akako's reaction to having her magic called advanced science to her face. Honestly, Hakuba might very well be correct. Maybe she was on a higher plane of existence — ha! Not likely — and was manipulating, like, antigravity. Antimatter. Kaito didn't actually know how any of that stuff worked.

"Yes. Well. Now that that's out of the way, do you mind telling me why, exactly, you care?"

Kaito considered. "Can't."

"You can't."

"Nope. Can't tell."

"Why not?"

Ha. Now here was one he could, actually, answer. "Magic," he chirped, grinning to himself at the expression of exasperated consternation Hakuba immediately adopted in response.

"Kuroba?"

"Yes?"

"Get the hell out of my house."

* * *

Sunday morning once more. Anticipation woke Kaito up earlier than he might've otherwise, and he opened his eyes to the morning light filtering in from the window. He sat up and stretched, extending his back and shoulders to their safest possible extents, feeling composed in comparison to the previous week's neuroticism.

Today he would reset. He felt resolved in this now. There was no point in dragging out something that he felt zero commitment to anymore. Better to start fresh and actually make it count.

He checked the time on his phone. It was 8 a.m., and that might still be too early, but...

Without thinking too hard about it, he opened his contacts and dialed Kudou's number.

The call rang for several long seconds as Kaito leaned back against the wall and sprawled back in bed. Kudou finally picked up right as Kaito was ready to accept that he would have to try again later when Kudou wasn't sleeping.

"Good morning!" he said, ignoring Kudou's groggy, confused reply. "I'm glad this is still your number; I haven't actually checked that it was for, hm. A year? I know I checked when you came back that you hadn't gotten a new one, but that was even longer ago."

"Who is this?" Kudou didn't sound alarmed, just somewhat bewildered, and Kaito was pleased to have nailed the emotional mood he'd been trying for.

"I'm sure you'll guess soon enough," he replied. "Or else I might have to confiscate your right to be called a meitantei. That said, did I wake you? Please say you weren't up all night, because that would be even worse. But I did always think you seemed like a night owl."

"I — hey — no, I was awake." Kudou's tone was trending more towards annoyance but not to the surprise that meant he knew who he was talking to yet. "I only woke up a few minutes ago, though — I'm sorry, how do you have this number?"

Oops. Kaito swallowed the delighted, almost giddy feeling of catching Kudou off balance. It wasn't the kind of strange intimacy he'd ever managed to have before with him. They'd never spent more than a day or two together at a time, and never overnight.

"Can you really not guess, _Meitantei-san?_ Don't tell me I'll have to start going easier on you, now. That'll take all the fun out of life."

And there it was: the sharp intake of breath, followed by Kudou spluttering, "KID? What the hell? Why are you calling me?"

"What, I can't ring up my favorites from time to time? What a shame that would be! And I had such plans for all the ways I could misuse being allowed to call you." The giddiness had blossomed into content warmth, and Kaito was sure it would alarm him later, but for now he couldn't help but bask in it. He'd been stalked all week by a growing emptiness that gnawed at his attention, and to have it replaced by something so pleasant didn't incline him to throw water on the embers.

Kudou heaved a sigh. "Does that mean I should be expecting this? Should I be getting police to tap my number so they can track you down? Seriously, I'll do it, but I'd rather not have to have them eavesdropping on my life. Though I'm sure there's some sadist out there who'd enjoy hearing me get my ear talked off by my mother."

Kaito laughed, shutting his eyes and tilting his head back against the wall. "Mine does that too. You remember me telling you about her, don't you? She's a nuisance. I call her up after we haven't talked all week and, man, she can really go on and on. Sometimes I tune back in thirty minutes later and realize she's been saying something that I actually should have listened to, and then I spend all week waiting for it to come back to bite me." His voice was turning warm and fond at the edges, and that was okay. Kudou would assume the fondness was for his mother.

"Your mother, the Phantom Lady. I remember." There was a faint noise on the other side of the call. Kudou setting down a mug, or a glass of water? "Are you seriously just calling to reminisce?"

"No, no. Unfortunately not. I'm getting to a point, but maybe I wanted to hear your voice for a minute, is that such a crime?" It was easy to slip into character a little more. KID was a better flirt than Kaito had ever managed on his own.

Kudou muttered something Kaito didn't quite catch, followed by, "Hard to say. You commit so many crimes that I wouldn't be shocked if you wound this into one as well."

Kaito muffled a laugh into his hand before replying. "Well, I don't think this is one. Unless you count me borrowing Mouri-san's phone years ago to get the number, that is. I meant to get it directly off of you, but I swear, that damn radar of yours, Kudou. You could detect me approaching from half a block away." Shit, he'd slipped, called him by name instead of title. Oh well. It wasn't like he'd remember it, soon enough. "Anyway, no. This is something — something a lot weirder, I'm sorry to say." It was hard to swallow a sigh. He didn't want to end the conversation, but the more it dragged on, the worse the soulmate pull would likely end up being next time around.

"Is that so?"

"Yeah. Here, let me see if I can drop you a clue." He turned the pieces over in his head, trying to design some kind of hint to get Kudou to guess the subject. It was rather like building a heist notice, except while being unable to use half the words he needed.

"When it comes to this dance," he began, thinking out the words as he spoke, "my feet are bound. I can approach on diagonal, but my quarry stands on a different color of tile. Instead, I can only circle, close enough to feel but never close enough to touch, waiting for the knight to leave his square." He yawned and ran a hand through his hair. "I usually cut out all the extra words and make things more obscure on the second draft, but I'm afraid we don't have time for that. It may not be up to your usual riddle standards."

He could nearly hear Kudou's brain kicking into gear with interest. "Give me a day. Less than, even."

Kaito grimaced and glanced out the window at where the sun was creeping higher in the sky. "Can't," he said. "Sorry. I can't deal with going over a week when I promised myself a fresh start."

"A fresh — KID, what are you up to? Are you... going somewhere?" The intrigue in Kudou's voice had sharpened to something closer to concern.

"Never mind that." Kaito stood up from bed to wander over to the window and look outside. There were plenty of people up and about, and the day was crystalizing to something that looked gloomy and cold. "Here, I promise that next time I give you a riddle, I'll polish it up more first. But… Well, I've been dallying, and I have a test to run properly this time. That's all."

Kudou surprised him with his next words. "Okay," he said. "I can't claim to understand, but you probably like it better that way, right? So, uh… Take care, I guess. Wherever it is you're going."

It was something so sweet and painful at once that twisted in Kaito's chest. Out of habit, he ducked out of sight of the window while he got himself under control again. "I don't." He came to a stop in front of the framed portrait of his father, gazing into that fathomless expression. "Like it better this way, I mean. Not this time."

He cleared his throat before Kudou could try to press him on that. "Hey, so." The spots crept into the corners of his vision, and he thought better of resetting while standing in front of a long drop to the basement. Kaito dropped back onto the bed and shut his eyes to block the dizziness out as much as he could for his next words. "So, the thing I can't say. We're — "

* * *

Two in the morning. Kaito took in one slow, sleepy blink of his dark bedroom before closing his eyes again.

A theory began to form in his mind. It was an odd hour to be set back to. Why not when he awoke in the morning? Why not midnight?

It must've been the time at which Akako completed the spell, he decided. The moment that it took effect over his life, that was what he kept returning to. It was odd — frustrating — to not be able to feel it at all. Something this powerful, that was able to ruin his life so much unless he found his way out of it… Come to think of it, he _had_ slept poorly that night. Kaito thought he remembered dreaming something about Kudou.

More the fool him for thinking nothing of it.

He would have to run the heist again later, no matter how much he was dreading it. Kaito rolled over and got comfortable, determined to will himself back into slumber.

* * *

The heist. Kaito was determined to make it go as smoothly as he could. No distractions, no slipping off for conversations, no baiting Hakuba for entertainment. Kaito turned up early, instead, and wore his uniform as a server for a few hours before the banquet really got going.

This time he didn't intend to swap disguises at all, he decided. He wasn't in the mood for small talk, anyway, and at least this gave him something to keep busy with, no matter how boring the actual work was.

Not to mention the grating irritation of being treated like furniture by a bunch of high and mighty rich people. There were some people that deserved to have their precious rocks stolen, he thought to himself after getting elbowed out of the way hard enough to almost drop his tray. It wasn't his usual style, sure, but he was always tempted to say to hell with it and keep the things he stole off Suzuki. If it wouldn't have fucked over his reputation, he might have gone through with it, too.

The one thing he did have to keep his mind occupied was his memories of how this had gone in the past. Being in the same room as Kudou made the phantom pangs in his chest worsen, and it took some attention to keep his feet on the right circuits.

He was careful not to divert, careful to make sure he didn't get shuffled into serving that area, because if he ended up within earshot of Kudou…

Well, Kaito liked to think he had better self-control than that. But the phone call felt like it had made the draw that much stronger, and he was reluctant to keep feeding it if he didn't have to.

Besides, the whole point of this was to see how long he could resist, and what Akako would make of it.

The most exciting moment before the start of the heist was when Hakuba had stopped him to give him his empty drink to take back to the kitchen. He'd only given Kaito a cursory glance, and Kaito was disguised as usual with partial facial prosthetics, but still. It had sent a bit of a thrill coursing through him, which at least woke up his stupefying brain.

And then, only twenty-five minutes of snail-paced agony later, was the heist itself.

Kaito hadn't yet failed to pull off a heist, and he'd had practice for this one. He nabbed the necklace with time to spare and went out a window that he'd found unguarded on an earlier loop without encountering Kudou.

And if he felt a pang at not getting to talk to him this time, well. That was the whole point of trying this strategy, wasn't it?

* * *

The week slipped by, and Kaito found it easy enough this time to keep himself on track. He knew where all the pitfalls were already from having gone through everything once, and though it made for a very boring week, he managed to persevere through forced dogged persistence.

However, the gnawing feeling of the soul bond in his chest continued to accrue by increments.

After the first week had gone by, Kaito sat himself down and faced the facts.

Whatever Akako's goal was with this, he assumed it had to do with keeping him and Shin'ichi apart. His initial guess had been that she was trying to corner him into something like this, where he just decided that the hassle of being trapped in the loops wasn't worth trying to resolve the connection with Kudou and lived out his life without seeking him out.

Now he wasn't so sure.

Maybe the point was to push him to the point where the unrecognized bond was so acutely painful that he'd welcome her _assistance_ in cutting him off from it. That he'd become willing let her control him in order to be free of the ache of it.

Kaito liked to think that she wasn't so cruel as to go that far, but... He wasn't feeling too lucky.

Through sheer willpower, he made it through most of the next week. His classwork began to suffer towards the second half of it as the feeling of the soul bond calling to him began to grow enough for it to distract him throughout the day. Now no longer confined to the moments when his mind was quietest after he woke up, he found himself often pacing the length of his house, trying to keep ahead of the nagging pull.

Sometimes he dreamed of Kudou all night.

In the afternoon before his final class of the week, Kaito gave up. He slung his bag over one shoulder and left campus, knowing he was too antsy to sit through even an interesting lecture. He picked a train at random and rode it for a while, hoping that some new sights and a long walk home might help him shake it off enough to fall asleep at a reasonable hour.

It was a good thing he hadn't had any other heists planned, because Kaito suspected he would have been unmistakably off his game.

He got off the train once standing still began to get to him and wandered through the busy streets, not paying attention to where his feet led him, more choosing where to turn based on which direction felt more interesting. Being anonymous in the crowd helped a little. It made his feelings seem less important, easier to let go of.

It wasn't until Kaito heard a familiar laugh that his attention snapped back to his surroundings. He'd spent a lot of time memorizing different voices and intonations, and Suzuki Sonoko's voice was very recognizable to him.

From the shadow under a shop front he scanned the throngs until he saw her. She was across the street, arm-in-arm with Mouri Ran, standing perpendicular to — his stomach dropped — Kudou himself.

Had he known, by some instinct? Had Kaito been subconsciously drawn here, following a subliminal siren song to his location? It... it could be coincidence. It had to be coincidence, except that Kaito had been trying so hard to stay away from him, and the moment he let his mind wander and his feet lead where they chose... They brought him to Kudou.

The sudden intensity with which the bond hit him made his ears ring. It was nothing like the dizziness before the loop reset. No, that was external, imposed on him, the sickening feeling of someone yanking the world out from under his feet.

This was an aching pull of yearning, an invisible current only he felt, drawing him step by step to the crosswalk and then across the street towards Kudou.

He couldn't approach them. Kaito had to walk away before someone saw him, before Mouri or Kudou recognized his familiar face, but —

But he just couldn't keep away.

He stopped a couple meters away from their small group with the bond screaming at him to move closer, to touch Kudou's arm and beg him to pay attention, to notice, to _see_ him, but through stubbornness alone he rooted his feet to the ground and watched.

Kudou didn't seem to feel a thing. Maybe Kaito was far enough away to not ping his sense of being watched, but there was some other meaning here, something that was escaping him at the moment, something trying to whisper but unable to be heard over the oceanic roar of the tides.

Mouri looked up and Kaito saw as if from a distance the way she paled at the sight of him. She grabbed Kudou's arm, alerting him, and he turned around, and...

Crossing the final distance to him felt like a dream. Kudou looked confused, even a little alarmed, and Kaito should have felt exposed, should have been afraid of what Mouri or Suzuki might do, but there wasn't any room in his head for thoughts that weren't of Kudou.

"I..." He stopped to lick his lips, voice strangely faint. "Don't you...?" No, clearly not. If Kudou could feel the bond, surely he would have reacted by now.

Mouri was saying something, and Kaito should be listening, or bracing himself, or walking away.

Instead, Kaito reached out, unable to stop himself, and touched Kudou's wrist, and finally, finally, the inside of his mind quieted. "I wish I could tell you." The noise of the streets was muffled, as if by touching him, they had been drawn into a protective cocoon of quiet. "I wish..."

Or maybe it was just the black spots crowding into his vision.

"Shin'ichi, I — "

* * *

2 am.


	5. Fits and Pieces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific warnings: a character vomits on screen

Kaito ran the funniest version of his heist yet, which was to say that he turned up for the heist dressed anonymously and sat around trying not to laugh when the time for the show to begin rolled around without KID making an appearance. He'd always kind of wanted to see how it would go, and it didn't disappoint, watching the cops run around like headless chickens. It took some effort to muffle his amusement at the disgruntled guests and hypervigilant police.

Of course, his bit of fun came to an end too soon, because he apparently just wasn't allowed to have nice things anymore. He caught sight of Inspector Nakamori by accident and was hit with an immediate surge of guilt at the genuine worry on his face, and only a few steps past him was Hakuba, with that distinct expression that fell somewhere between "why do you exist to make my life difficult" and "but are you dying, because don't." He didn't want to find out what Kudou looked like. Kaito couldn't shake the image of him not being concerned at all.

With a sigh, he turned to the older gentleman next to him. "Excuse me," he said in soft, polite tones. "Do you know Kudou Shin'ichi?"

"Eh?" The man's inflection suggested that he was maybe approaching deafness, but he frowned at Kaito and repeated, "Kudou Shin'ichi?" so clearly he wasn't there yet.

"Yes, the detective?"

"I've heard of him, sure. Why?"

"Well, you see, he and I — "

* * *

Gods, but Kaito was bored. Jii could tell something was wrong, but he just didn't have the energy to reassure him, nor the willingness to actually bother to try. Instead, he sat on the edge of the roof and swung his legs, idly wondering if Akako had accounted for an automatic reset to the loop if he died. She probably had, being the annoyingly thorough bitch that she was.

"Bou-chama — "

"So, I'm thinking fireworks for next time," Kaito said. "No particular reason I guess, I just haven't had a chance to fuck with them in ages. And it'll be interesting to hide the equipment from the police until the right time. Yeah? Not my usual style, sure, but maybe I need to mix things up a bit." He was still in his recon blacks, so it didn't matter if he flopped backwards on the concrete and got dirt in his hair.

From upside down, Jii looked like he was worrying that Kaito might be losing it, which was reasonable. He probably was, after all.

"Anyway," he said. "Doesn't really matter, huh. Who the hell knows when I'll actually run another heist, after all. Maybe I'll work some into this one another time."

Huh. He'd actually managed a sentence that alluded at all to his situation. That was a first.

...Kaito would have to work harder at not freaking Jii out so much. It wasn't really fair to him; not his fault Kaito had pissed off an obsessive witch when he was sixteen.

"If you aren't feeling well, it isn't too late to..." Jii trailed off when Kaito waved an expansive arm.

"No, no, it's fine. I'm just in a weird mood. Bit tired, but hey, let's go knock this shit out of the park, yeah? I'll be maudlin some other time."

He really did not want to go into the heist building, he realized. There was just only so much of the same conversational cues he could recycle before his brain started dripping out his ears. He could probably navigate his way through the heist 30 seconds after waking up by now, and he just felt so ambivalent about it. The whole thing seemed about as interesting and engaging as his homework usually did, and Kaito already felt greyed out, turning sepia at the edges.

...Maybe he needed a new character. An eccentric old woman with a lot of absurd jewelry was always a fun one.

"Hey, Jii, have I told you that — "

* * *

Kaito strolled into the hall with a hair piece to rival all hair pieces and enormous saggy tits. At least two people did a double-take when they saw him exit the bathroom. Kaito sincerely hoped that someone would notice how outlandishly out of place he was and realize he wasn't on the guest list. At least that would be something new to do.

Oh, fuck, Nakamori at 9 o'clock. He swerved away casually and waded into the throngs.

An hour until the heist. He could hit on some old guy; that was always entertaining. And no feelings would get hurt, after all. He was just going to restart this mess once he'd had his fun.

Kaito snagged a dessert off a tray and popped it in his mouth, surveying the sea of potential victims. If the flirting didn't work out, he could always find another outrageous old lady to hang out with. They had the best senses of humor. With a nod to himself and an absent minded hoisting up of his fake tits, he struck off into the crowd.

* * *

"Well, well." Akako's voice interrupted the meandering spiral of Kaito's thoughts. "Good evening, KID-san."

Kaito slowly straightened from his crouch, abandoning the equipment from this particular rooftop stash on the ground. He looked directly back at her unapologetically, taking in both her perch on her broomstick, hovering half a meter over the ground, and her smile, ever so slightly smug. "Witch. What do you want? Come to release me?"

Her smile slowly spread. "Just checking in on you. My magic mirror is no substitute for real life impressions, unfortunately. I see you're looking… strained."

"I wonder what could be causing that." Kaito's voice was flat and cold as he crossed his arms. "So, you're spying on me?"

"Oh, yes," she said, slipping off the broomstick in a whirl of skirts to land noiselessly on the roof. "Every day, or so I assume. I gather you're quite scattered. Erratic, perhaps."

Kaito only glared at her, feeling that same feeling of deep seated rage trying to struggle to the surface. He breathed slowly, pressing it back down. "You don't know what actually happens on each of these days, do you?"

She shrugged. "Does it matter? I saw a vision of your yesterday last night as my ritual completed. Perhaps tomorrow I'll see your today. It isn't too much for you, I hope. After all, I'm only trying to keep you safe."

Kaito barked out a harsh laugh, unable to stop himself. "Keep me safe? That's rich. I'm not buying it, not unless your definition of ‘safety' involves you leaving me alone forever."

And still she stood there, smug as a lazy cat with a mouse it had no intention of eating after its inevitable death. Kaito was seized with an impulse to hurt her, to shove her down and kick her until the spell broke.

So long as she was still alive, she'd be fine once he reset, he thought, and then was immediately ashamed of himself. He wasn't this kind of person, _refused_ to be the type who took pleasure in hurting someone who had nearly been his friend.

Akako just shook her head dismissively. "You would suffer with your wings clipped by a bond. Trust me, I'm doing you a favor."

Kaito felt the hysterical urge to scream at her building in his throat. "You're a revolting hypocrite, Koizumi. It doesn't matter what you do to me — I will never let you turn me into one of your puppets. I'd rather die."

"Good luck with that," she said without so much as a batted eyelash, and Kaito felt something unnameable and heavy drop into his stomach. "Your stubbornness will only hurt yourself, you know. Your bondmate won't feel a thing. So, once you change your mind… I'll be waiting to cut you free. Witches don't have soulmates, you know. I know you can't imagine it yet, but the _freedom,_ Kuroba-kun. You'll see. Sooner or later, you'll see that I'm right. And once I snap the bond, you'll be free to choose the path you'll take. You'll be free to choose a partner who truly suits you all on your own, and then you'll see the truth — with nothing pinning you down, the heights you'll soar to…" She took a single, determined step forward, passion shining on her face, and Kaito stumbled back, transfixed by her fervor. "It'll be grander than you ever dreamed of," she finished. "And I can wait as long as you need."

Between one blink and the next, she had mounted her broom again, favoring him with one final, terrible smile before soaring away, off into the sky and gone from sight.

Kaito gave in to the tremor building in his legs and collapsed onto the cement.

* * *

He lay on his side in bed, playing some color matching game on his phone. He'd been playing it for a couple hours, and when he shut his tired eyes, the little dancing spots of color seemed imprinted on his corneas.

He probably should've gone back to sleep when he jolted awake, as ever, at the glorious early hour of two in the morning, but he'd seen some bored teen playing this game on their phone and had been hooked from a single glance. Never mind that his eyes were starting to burn from lack of sleep or that he needed to get up in a few hours. Not like it mattered. At least he could get some instant gratification out of this dumb little matching game.

Screw Akako. There had to be a loophole he could exploit. Kaito was good at finding those. He just had to find the right weak point to put pressure on.

But first he had to drag himself out of the unmitigated pit of apathy that he seemed to have fallen into.

If he reset again, she wouldn't remember their conversation. But she would still be spying on him, watching him struggle through the same stupid heist endlessly. Not that he couldn't have pulled it off in his sleep by this point, but he was so very tired.

Maybe he'd find the sitting room that Kudou had shown him on, what, the second loop? Take a nap in there until it was go time, and just try very hard not to think about Akako watching him sleep.

Gods, that was just so creepy.

And if someone found him napping in an off limits room and kicked him out, well, he could always reset, couldn't he, and then Akako wouldn't remember their conversation. Then he'd just have to worry about her ambushing him all over again.

Luckily, or maybe unluckily, Kaito simply could not bring himself to care.

* * *

Kaito couldn't stop being peripherally aware of Kudou, where he was in the room, when he stood from his chair to go speak to someone. It was like a little lodestone lodged in his chest that pointed forever toward him.

And Kaito just couldn't deal with it today.

What was the point of running this stupid heist for the umpteenth time? Why bother, except to see Shin'ichi, whom he couldn't even approach? If Kaito talked to him, it would only worsen the draw of the bond that beat alongside Kaito's heart, while the endless loops left Shin'ichi oblivious.

Kaito wished he were so lucky as to spend his days in ignorant peace, to be frank.

Instead, he felt hollow, drained and emptied of meaning. The world spun around him like wind-up dolls that would go or stop as he chose, except that he didn't have a choice either. He _hated_ dancing to someone else's tune, hated it so much that the flames of it licked his hollow innards, and that scared him. He'd never been one for this kind of hot-burning anger. With Snake, it had always been... cold, and slow, and impatient sometimes, but he'd known it would be a long game.

This was Akako's long game, and he wanted...

Not good things. Violent things he'd never felt before, except on particularly bad nights about Snake's squad of goons, or about the police who had written his father's death off as an accident despite his mother and Jii insisting it wasn't. Akako was... She was his age, someone he'd come of age _with_ , someone he knew personally. Sometimes she'd even been a friend. She was _still_ Aoko's friend.

Kaito didn't want to want to hurt her.

He realized he was clutching the table too tightly, knuckles showing through the fine silk of his disguise gloves, and forced himself to relax. It was hard, though, fighting against his own body to slowly unknot the exhausted anger and emptiness that seemed to want to wind him up into a heap.

Kaito didn't want to be there anymore. At least at home he was... not safe, but there was comfort in his bed, his things, Aoko only a shout away. Here was just a stage he directed night after night, and all the players acting out the same lines over and over.

"Excuse me for a minute," he said to his group of gossiping rich people, and walked away.

He intended to go to the restroom, give himself a moment to collect his composure, set all this — this bubbling feeling in his stomach until he was home and had the space to deal with it, but...

Instead, he pushed through the crowd almost blindly, only having attention to offer to the tug that led to Shin'ichi, keeping it at his back to be sure he didn't accidentally follow it right to him. Eventually the mass of people thinned, and Kaito didn't have to do anything except walk to make his way to a door.

Just having the quiet of not being surrounded by so many people was better. The anger and overwhelming feeling of not being able to let go of his feelings abated slowly, draining out of him like a clogged sink. He walked aimlessly down the hall, ignoring the silent cops manning the hallways, putting more space between himself and the banquet hall, as the rest of the mess finally sank out of him, and he was just... hollow.

He didn't want to stay, but he didn't want to go, didn't want to have to walk outside and face Jii's confusion. He wanted to have never come in the first place, to have played hooky on Jii again and stayed in bed all day. Of course he _could_ do that, in the very literal sense that he could send himself right back to the very early hours of Sunday morning, but the idea of stomaching another reset made him queasy with impotent fury.

Instead, he walked until he found a window. Fresh air sounded... not nice, but better. Something cold to shock his brain, to wake him up a little. This wasn't a dream, after all. It only felt like one.

The window, of course, was locked, and when he reached to unlock it, several alarmed police voices tried to stop him.

"Miss, you can't open that, KID will be here any minute — "

Kaito ground his teeth in frustration. "I just want some fresh air," he said, and his voice came out flat and emotionless as a cold stone plateau. "Is that a fucking crime, now?"

He could tangibly feel the cop's attitude turn from wary but respectful of a well-dressed, affluent young woman to unyielding and distrustful. "Miss, I'm going to have to ask you to step away from the window," said the officer. His tone had turned firm — harsh, really. Kaito took a deep breath and vied for patience. _Be nice, act the part of being meek and obedient, don't give yourself away_ — except that he probably had already doomed himself, because they were sure to search him for signs of being KID's accomplice (or just, ha, himself), and Kaito had tools strapped all down his legs.

Fuck it.

Kaito shoved the window open as he flipped himself backwards, shoving the cop away with one high-heeled foot to the face in the same breath that he shoved his upper body out the window. The night air hit him like a slap, the city-smell of exhaust and cold, polluted air, and the other two cops had lunged to get him by the ankles.

Kaito twisted, kicked again, and slid right out of the slippery fabric with a deft snap of the clasps that held it up, leaving them holding crinkled silk and him boosting himself upwards in a slip and his padded body suit. He had a change of clothes stashed in the material and could change once he was on the roof. Someone might see him — or at least his legs, which weren't hidden by the black slip he wore under the dress but over the padding.

Oh well. Kaito could not bring himself to give a crap.

The cops below were shouting, but Kaito was busy scaling the wall freehand. Normally he'd use his grappling hook, but that would require him to take a hand off the wall, and he just wasn't feeling up to it. Mostly he wanted to press his face into the wall and wait for the whole world to leave him alone, but that wasn't happening. Ah, the joys of being a celebrity criminal.

He climbed. The walls were textured and the window frames close together. He'd scaled worse surfaces, really. He was just tired, and his head was aching, and he didn't want to do this. Maybe he should have scaled downward instead. It was slower, but less predictable, probably. Too late now.

Kaito grabbed the next ledge and hoisted himself up, holding his entire weight in his arms until his feet found the next foothold, and wished he'd just reset the loop when he was still inside, rather than embarking on this idiot plan.

He made it to the top floor windows before everything went horribly wrong.

There was a split second warning of commotion behind the window next door, and Kaito paused for a fatal moment just as his window was thrown open. The police seized one of his wrists as Kaito yanked the other away, and he wasn't prepared for this. They wrestled for a breathless moment, Kaito feeling certain something in his arm would dislocate as he fought to twist himself free. The cops were shouting to each other, incomprehensible and cacophonous, more piling in to hold him while the closest leaned out to try and grab more of him, and — was that Kudou, pushing his way forward?

No time for a second look. One of Kaito's feet slipped and he gritted his teeth as more of his weight rested on his shoulder for a second before he braced his toe flat against the wall. They were going to grab him any moment now, surely, and Kaito didn't have the loose sleeves of his suit to hide his tools in, only skin-tight fabric over his bare arms. He couldn't wrench free from multiple hands at once without taking the time to get his balance back.

Okay. Stop panicking. Just because he was tired didn't mean he couldn't get away. If he fell, he should have just enough time to use his grappling hook to yank himself up towards the roof again.

He slapped his free hand flat against the wall, out of reach for the moment, and shoved backwards hard as he twisted away with his whole body behind it.

It worked. The hands on him lost their grip. As he yanked away, something in his shoulder popped, pain shooting up his whole arm, and he could _feel_ the bones lying out of place, a sensation so jarringly, unmistakably wrong that Kaito recognized it at once.

For a breathless, suspended moment, Kaito locked eyes with Kudou, saw the emotions painted openly across his face.

And then he was falling.

No time to fumble — uninjured hand going for the gun, bad angle to reach in, pushing his mind past the pain, gun in his off-hand, precious moments lost to operating something not built to be used ambidextrously —

Kaito had looked up what death from a fall felt like before, once it became clear the hang glider wasn't going away any time soon. Usually he tried not to think about it too hard, but he still remembered what he'd found. He had enough time to desperately wish to die on impact, to not be left with internal injuries too bad to survive, to not feel any pain.

The impact rolled through his body like a shock wave, and his mind was a thousand miles away, feeling only strangely blank for a long, breathless nanosecond of icy stillness before — before —

Kaito fell out of bed, choking down a scream. His whole body was shaking, and when he tried to push himself off the floor his muscles didn't respond. He curled into a reflexive ball so tightly that his whole body cramped, but it was nothing in comparison to the searing phantom pain in his mind, and breathing _hurt_ , stabbing his lungs, and then he was on his hands and knees, vomiting.

It was, at least, hard to hyperventilate and puke at the same time. He crawled away from the mess and collapsed again, and this time he could hear over his heartbeat enough to hear his wheezing, stabbing gasps as he fought to breathe.

Logically, it was surely better to be panicking, not in shock, but he lost that thought under the rapid spasms of his mind as it struggled not to drown in terror.

Kaito gave up all pretense of being able to escape the panic. He shattered into sobs.

* * *

When the tears had finally dried up and his breaths were coming relatively regularly, Kaito hurt all over, the full-body ache of feeling like he'd been hung outside and beaten clean. He breathed, hiccuping occasionally, feeling sorry for himself. Eventually he realized how cold he was, pajamas soaked in clammy sweat, and managed to make himself sit up.

He should shower. If he went back to bed, he'd fall asleep, and he still had to clean the floor. Kaito felt...

Empty.

He hadn't thought about it, about dying, not for more than a few moments, really, but to have even that escape taken away, to realize how thoroughly Akako had snapped the trap shut around him... It wasn't a good feeling. Kaito didn't want to die, but he didn't want to live as her slave, either.

He wanted his mom to live at home like she'd done when he was little, or for Aoko to be awake, or even for the comfort of Nakamori's awkward attempts at parenting. He wanted Shin'ichi to be there so badly that his whole chest ached with it. He wanted anything except being alone right then.

Instead, he forced himself to his feet, swaying only a little, and shuffled to the bathroom. He stripped naked and scrubbed himself clean. The warmth sank into his bones and began slowly melting the icy rock of fear in his stomach.

Eventually, when the warm water had ceased to do anything to help, he dried off and got dressed. He even made himself clean up his bedroom floor before sinking down on the bed with his head in his hands.

So he'd fallen. He'd always known it was a risk, had always silently feared it in bad moments. He knew Jii had often been afraid for him, too. And sure, the risks hadn't always panned out. He had the scars to prove it — not to mention one fractured collarbone, three broken and four dislocated ribs, five wrist and ankle sprains, two concussions, a variety of bad scrapes, and one dislocated elbow. This was only a more severe form of that.

Without letting himself think about it too hard, Kaito reached for his phone and dialed Aoko.

It took two tries before she picked up, making a sleepy, confused noise into the speaker in lieu of words. Even just hearing her on the other end of the phone made stupid tears sting his eyes again.

"Hey. Aoko?"

"Kai — " she yawned " — Kaito? Is everything okay?"

It had been years since he'd called her so late. He made himself ask, despite the immediate impulse to swallow it all down again. "I… don't feel so good. Can I come over?"

To her endless credit, Aoko didn't so much as bat an eye. "I'll get the futon out for you," she promised, and Kaito agreed that he'd be right over in a subdued voice.

She met him at the back door, hair pulled back in a sloppy bun for sleep, squinting against the brightness of the overhead lights. Whatever was on his face must've been bad, because she grabbed his wrist and towed him over to the futon in the living room. He hadn't been allowed to sleep on the floor of her room in years, but he wished he still could.

"Hey," he mumbled, sitting down slowly. His muscles still ached from the aftermath of tension.

"Talk to me," she said without pretense, sitting cross legged on the sofa in her slippers and sleep pants. Despite being sleepy-faced and mussed, she looked strangely grown up in that moment, and Kaito wished again with a pang for the simplicity of their childhood.

"Bad dream," he said after a second. The lie was bitter on his tongue. "Really — really bad dream. I don't really want to talk about it."

She eyed him. "Did you… shower?"

Oops. The wet hair. He shrugged. "I threw up. Needed a wash."

"Oh, Kaito." She sighed, a soft, sympathetic noise. "Can Aoko make you something to settle your stomach? Or tea?"

He shook his head and wrapped his arms around his knees. "I'm okay now. Just tired, I guess. Do you — do you want to sleep down here? Would that be okay?"

Aoko nodded immediately. "Of course! Dad can make an exception. Besides, we're in the living room. Aoko will just go grab a blanket, okay?"

"Sure." He lay down without watching her go, staring up at the ceiling. At least his mind was no longer whirling. He should be able to fall back asleep tonight. Or at least, he hoped he would.

Having Aoko there helped. Even if he didn't sleep, he felt safer, just knowing she was there. Selfishly, he was glad she didn't know about KID. It meant that when things like this happened, he could step away and leave it all behind for however long she'd let him mope around her.

The quick patter of her slippers announced her return. "Aoko's going to get the lights," she called, and accordingly, the room plunged into darkness. She picked her way past him carefully, followed by the _fwomp_ of a blanket being tossed onto the couch.

They were both quiet for a long minute after she settled, and in the quiet, Kaito finally parsed the way Kudou had looked at him just before he had fallen.

Alarm, dismay. Maybe even fear.

"You know you can tell Aoko anything, right?" Aoko asked eventually.

Kaito squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed down the lump in his throat. "Yeah," he said. "I know."


	6. Coil

This time, Kaito managed to nearly perfectly fool Jii.

He didn't feel great about it, but it was, in a painful way, a weight off his shoulders to know Jii wasn't worrying. Kaito limited their prep time together and when he began to feel absolute dread at the idea of going into the heist, he was able to feel it alone, where his hesitation wouldn't be cumbersome to hide.

Maybe he should have given himself some more recovery time first. Probably would've been a better plan, yeah. But.

But, obviously, being stuck in these loops was doing him no favors. If he wanted a way out that wasn't crawling at Akako's feet, he needed to try again with Kudou. He needed to keep trying, and not run away for a week whenever being around him felt too raw, or he'd never make it out of this.

So. Pull it together. Get dressed in his disguise as a beverage server. Take a deep breath, and go inside.

Once he was in, it was easier to work on autopilot. Honestly, most of the people around him were probably doing the same. Get through the evening, lock all of the indignities of being invisible to rich people away in your head, go home, collapse into bed. Most people weren't also international thieves, but Kaito figured they still all had something in common.

And he wasn't going to be climbing any walls this time, that was for sure. He didn't even necessarily plan to swipe the gem. He was here to watch Kudou and get new ideas on how to approach him, whether here or someplace else.

The ballroom where the party was held had long lost any interest. Kaito didn't remember ever being taken in by its glittering promises, but now it just grated on him. While the anonymity of the crowd let him move around easily, it was also a hassle to have to account for so many people. In some ways he preferred the times when there was room to run and play in the empty corners, to let Kudou chase him far away from the main masses of police.

Oh, well. There were plenty of empty hallways here; Kaito just had to make better use of them.

There he was. As ever, Kudou was talking to Hakuba, tone somewhere between calm amusement and professional gravity. He wasn't fooling Kaito, of course, but probably the police appreciated it when Kudou refrained from going full rogue element.

So, in twenty minutes, Kudou would step away to talk to one of the lead officers under Nakamori, then return to chat with some of the people enjoying a post-meal drink around his original seat. In an hour, Hakuba would go talk to the gem's owner, Nishida Ine, and Kudou would be alone for a few minutes, texting someone on his phone. After Hakuba returned, though, they would both speak to Nakamori, and everyone would begin taking their places before the actual heist began.

Kaito figured his best chances were to approach Kudou once again while Hakuba was away, or after he'd snagged the jewel. Maybe he could try talking to Kudou again the way he had the very first time. So long as he stayed clear of any key topics, he wouldn't faint or reset or anything embarrassing like that, and he could...

Talk to him? Try to ask him to meet Kaito when it wasn't a heist? Kaito wasn't really sure. It was still strange, in some ways, to try to meet him outside the heist at all. The fact that they had recently spent time alone together without Kudou going into immediate takedown mode was the main thing encouraging him along in that respect.

That, and being able to reset. It did give Kaito the nerve to do things that ordinarily not even he would attempt.

His mind shied away from the memory of climbing the outer wall again, and he had to actually focus on his fake job as a server to shake it off entirely.

Anyway. No matter how he swung it, Kaito would be waiting a while before making a move. He refocused on the task at hand, putting trackers on any cops he happened to pass, and made sure he stayed out of the direct path of Kudou until he was well and ready for it. By this point, he could practically recite the next hour and a half of movements of half the occupants of the ballroom in his sleep.

And that was exactly why it was so surprising when he dodged around a young couple who were too enraptured in each other to notice him and saw Shin'ichi somewhere new.

Kaito only froze for a second before instinct kicked in and carried him through his acting, but he couldn't bring himself to walk away. He had been so busy ignoring the ache in his chest that he hadn't felt Shin'ichi moving at all.

It was fine. He'd probably changed something without realizing it. He would just change his orbit enough to not be in Shin — in _Kudou's_ line of sight, and he'd get on his with night.

The moment he had decided on this, of course, _of course,_ Kudou turned and looked directly at him.

Kaito froze. The yearning pull in his chest worsened infinitely, making him feel shaky and overheated, almost feverish with longing. He couldn't make himself leave, but he couldn't move any closer, either, not without giving himself away. Kaito was in no shape to pull off a lie, and Kudou had always been good at knowing it was him.

Something in Kudou's searching glance firmed into resolve, and he began to pick his way through the people between them, steadily moving in Kaito's direction.

Kaito's heart skipped a beat. He should leave — he should _run_ — he should do anything except stand there like an idiot and let Kudou approach him an hour before the heist began, what was he doing, what was he thinking? The ache in his chest had turned sweeter, like pressing on a bruise, but much better, like — well — like curling into something that felt good enough to drown in, heady and giddy and overwhelming all at once.

A passing stranger shot Kaito a curious glance, and almost at the same moment, someone called Shin'ichi's name. He looked away from Kaito towards the speaker, and Kaito came to his senses all at once, like stepping into icy water. He seized the clarity, tearing himself away before anyone else could notice. He could stay — he could risk it, he could reset if he had to, he should stay and let the sweet lure of the soul bond draw him in close enough to touch, but…

Kaito was afraid of how close it had felt to losing himself.

He fled.

* * *

That was not the last time he turned up somewhere Kaito hadn't expected him to be.

Kaito had been so, so sure that he wasn't affected by the bond, that the loops had caused the pressure to realize it to surge for Kaito alone, but…

He was starting to suspect, with great trepidation out of fear that he was wrong, that this wasn't entirely the case.

The need to seek Shin'ichi out, to, if nothing else, spend time in his presence, had grown immense. Kaito began to have trouble concentrating, finding his thoughts drifting to him regularly over the course of the day. It was annoying when he tried to wash the same dirty dishes for the 3rd time, and a liability when he was mid-heist.

Still, he couldn't bring himself to regret his failed attempts to draw Shin'ichi's attention.

And that was another thing. How long had Kaito been thinking of him as Shin'ichi? When had it started? He'd had a private, embarrassed moment of surprise when he'd caught himself doing it, but he didn't seem able to switch back to calling him Kudou. His family name no longer felt natural in Kaito's mouth.

Soul bonds were peculiar things. Maybe... if the bond had reached a point where it affected Kaito so strongly, it might conceivably begin to...

Kaito was afraid to hope. He was afraid of the crushing weight of disappointment, what it might do to his ability to persevere.

And yet, he couldn't keep himself from hoping against hope that this might be a sign that some of his desperation was beginning to leak through to Shin'ichi.

Much like the present moment.

Shin'ichi was rubbing the bridge of his nose, looking aggravated and bemused. "Miss, I'm sorry to ask such an impertinent question," he said, and Kaito lifted an eyebrow in carefully indifferent encouragement. "But do you happen to be Kaitou KID? I don't often put stock in gut feelings, but..."

Kaito raised the other eyebrow to match the first. "I'm not sure I understand what would lead you to such a thought, Meitantei Kudou-san. The guest list was thoroughly vetted, and I know I am just as much myself as any other night."

The uncertainty in Shin'ichi's face turned to conviction. Kaito hid his amusement by lowering his gaze to the floor.

"I thought so," Shin'ichi said, for all appearances to himself. "I had the strangest déjà vu..."

Kaito's heart leapt and his stomach turned over with frightened desperation. Please let him be affected. Please let him feel it. "Well, I'm sorry to have caused you consternation."

"Are you?" Kudou shot him a sidelong disbelieving glance.

Kaito hid a smile. "Maybe not. Will you follow me? There's still time before the heist. You can keep an eye on me."

Shin'ichi shook his head, muttering something no doubt insulting under his breath, but he followed. Kaito led the way, moving effortlessly through the shifting crowds, bond humming in his chest, pleased and greedy. He knew intellectually that it was in large part only a more intense, more uninhibited expression of his own feelings, but it was still disconcerting to feel so intensely desirous when in the past Kaito had always been inclined to approach relationships slowly.

Or not at all, he thought, thinking with wistful amusement of his and Aoko's uncertain dance in early high school. KID had killed that flower before it could ever bloom.

As had Shin'ichi.

Well — Edogawa. And it wasn't his fault, not really. Kaito had just been... He hadn't known how strong the draw to his soulmate would be, and it had frightened him for a while. He'd observed from a distance for a long time before he'd been ready to be curious about the details of Shin'ichi's life.

Alright, time to stop being maudlin. Kaito stopped in the doorway to the sitting room that Shin'ichi had brought him to, all the way back on his second day in this loop. The symmetry of coming back, this time with himself in the lead, was oddly satisfying.

"Here," he said. "This one's always empty."

"I think it's technically off limits," Shin'ichi said dubiously, hovering in the doorway. "Though not officially."

Kaito sat on the sofa and beamed at him, teeth and amusement. "Well, if it's not officially off limits, then how am I supposed to get any enjoyment out of it? I'd rather be officially trespassing, wouldn't you?"

Shin'ichi rolled his eyes without offering a verbal reply, stepped inside, and shut the door behind him. "So, what. You want to talk?"

The little sofa really was comfortable, despite being one of those fancy leather things that always looked too firm for comfort. Kaito relaxed back into it, unable to muster any worry about being alone with a detective. It was just Shin'ichi. They'd broken plenty of rules together, and.

And Kaito wanted to know how far he could go. The fluttering of unintended hope in his chest propelled him onward recklessly.

"Talk, sure. Whatever the kids call it these days." He slouched back and stretched. "Gods, you wouldn't believe how cold these dresses get, this time of year. I'm lucky that I wear a bodysuit, you know. I've done without before and if there's any hint of an outside breeze — yeesh. Goose flesh left and right. Are you going to sit? Or do you prefer to hover like an ill-mannered creep?"

Shin'ichi came closer, one unimpressed eyebrow raised. "Are you trying to bait me? It won't work." He sat on the arm of an armchair, still only half-perched. Cheater.

"Baiting, talking." Kaito waved a hand lazily. "All the same to me. You detective types are just so easy to wind up."

"So I've heard. Hakuba tells some interesting stories about you."

Kaito smiled, making sure the careless amusement spread across his face slowly. "I'm sure he does. Some of them might even be true."

"And I'm sure you have no intention of telling me which." Shin'ichi didn't even bother to phrase it as a question.

"Absolutely not. So — how did you find me? I'm very curious as to what gave it away." Kaito tried to keep his voice to light curiosity and amusement, and away from the clawing need to know.

Shin'ichi frowned down at the floor. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "There's usually something — a turn of phrase or an expression or the way you move. Even when you're acting, I mean. Details slip through so long as you're looking."

"But not this time?"

He shook his head slowly. "There must've been something that caught my attention. I just remember thinking that there was something I needed to pay attention to, and once I started looking, you did seem out of place." He looked annoyed to not know, wrinkled brow and fingers tapping on his knee. "I'm sure I'll figure it out once I think about it more."

"Well." Kaito's stomach was all anxiously hopeful knots. "Let me know, if you do. In the meantime..."

He didn't actually have something planned for this. He'd been turning over conversational topics in his head for the last day, but had yet to pick one that would be ideal for engaging Shin'ichi in conversation. Time to reach into the grab bag and see what he came up with.

"In the meantime, come here." Kaito leaned back on the couch and crossed his legs daintily, smiling toothily all the while. It had been... a while since he'd had any fun on this heist.

Shin'ichi eyed him warily. "Are you going to knock me out and impersonate me, because I will kick a soccer ball into your head if you try. I won't care if I fracture your skull, either."

Kaito couldn't help but laugh. "No, thank you. I like my disguise. It's fun to flaunt my feminine assets." He winked. "No. I'm going to show you a magic trick."

He earned himself an unimpressed eyebrow. "Whatever it is, I doubt you'll be able to surprise me."

"We'll see, won't we? Come sit, Meitantei. I'll hurt my neck to look up at you like this."

To Kaito's genuine surprise, Shin'ichi did as he was told. They were left very close together on the couch, and Kaito had to hide the fluttering of his nerves with a quick flourish.

"Now, then," Kaito said. "Which card do you want?" He had three different decks at hand and casually juggled them in one hand while he waited.

"The Fool," Shin'ichi said dryly. "It seems appropriate."

Kaito laughed. "I left the arcanas at home, I'm afraid. Jack of spades? That seems like a good one for you."

Shin'ichi rolled his eyes again and leaned back, body turned towards Kaito as he rested against the arm of the couch. "Jack of _clubs_ , please."

Kaito's whole body was alight and thrumming with the giddy feeling of pure proximity. It was heady and hard to control the current of it. "How sweet of you to think of me!" He shuffled all three decks together, disappearing the boxes into the folds of his dress. "Now, I'm sure you don't trust my shuffling, because you're an incurable skeptic, so I'll cut you a deal." The cards flew up and stacked themselves neatly onto his palms. "You can cut the deck as much as you want. I'll even close my eyes, if you like."

"I do like." But Shin'ichi didn't move yet. "Do you have to wear that get up? I've figured you out. You usually give it up by now."

"Oh? You don't like my outfit?" Kaito shimmied to make his fake breasts wiggle, and laughed to himself when Shin'ichi wrenched his gaze away rapidly. "I miss when it was so easy to fluster you. All I had to do was throw a pair of panties at you and it would throw you off for the whole night."

"You made it seem like they were Ran's! I hope evidence burned them." But the corner of his mouth had twitched, and his eyes were fighting not to crinkle. Kaito had got him, the damn impossible to amuse bastard.

"That's alright; I've got plenty more where that came from, and I could prove it right now if you wanted. Oh! Is that where I should pull the jack from? Might make your night more interesting, don't you think?"

Shin'ichi _spluttered_ , flushing red to the tips of his ears. "No, thank you! I can imagine perfectly well without you burning it into my retinas."

"You can imagine it perfectly? I'm glad to hear you think of me so often in such a flattering light." Kaito... had almost forgotten how easy it could be, teasing and flirting all in one breath. It made him feel so much lighter, so much more playful. It was nice. "Now cut the deck before I go ahead and shuffle for you, because we'll both be unhappy with that outcome."

Still red-faced and grumbling, Shin'ichi did. He cut the deck very thoroughly, mixing it some twelve times. Kaito shut his eyes as he'd promised, trying and failing to tamp his delight down to appropriate levels.

"Alright, then," he said when Shin'ichi determined that the decks were shuffled enough. "Watch carefully!" And with another flourish he began to shuffle, spinning the cards through the air with the ease of hundreds of hours of practice. It was nice to be skilled enough to watch Shin'ichi's flinty stare of scrutiny rather than keeping an eye on his hands.

The cards arched up to their climax, and Kaito tutted. "Well, that's enough, I think. No need to be such a show off." He clapped his hands and flung the cards up one final time, but only three cards remained when he lowered his hands. They fluttered gently down onto the couch. One landed face-up: the jack of clubs.

"Do you want to check the others, or shall I?" he offered casually, continuing to watch the calculating way Shin'ichi's gaze darted about.

"Don't you dare touch them." Shin'ichi flipped them both over to reveal two different designs of the same card. "Predictable," he muttered under his breath, and Kaito tried not to preen.

"So?"

Shin'ichi huffed. "So, I'll get back to you when I figure it out," he returned. "I still hold that you could easily have tracked the cards. Would you have done anything differently if you'd closed your eyes?"

Laughing, Kaito said, "That's for me to know and you to decide for yourself." And then he leaned in, took hold of Shin'ichi's tie, and dragged him closer into a kiss.

It was entirely an act of impulse, born of the long, painful nights with the slow-burning ache in his chest. He could feel Shin'ichi's muffled surprise against his mouth, and squeezed his eyes shut tighter.

Just another second. Just one more moment of pretending to have him, and then he'd stop.

Slowly, Kaito leaned back, letting go of the tie and avoiding checking Shin'ichi's facial expressions. It… had worked. He barely felt more than the faintest pangs of dizziness. They could kiss.

Pulling away hurt like hell, though. Maybe she'd left them the ability just so Kaito could drive himself off the knife's edge sooner.

"Um," Kaito said, lost for words. "Sorry. Just wanted… Never mind." He'd fallen back into his regular tones, nothing at all like the voice and formality he put on for KID, and hastily tried to regroup. "Just forget I did that, okay?"

"Huh," Shin'ichi said. He hadn't drawn back, instead remaining close to analyze Kaito's expressions with laser intensity. "I don't think I've ever seen you this flustered."

Kaito hid his face behind one hand and shoved Shin'ichi away with the other. Grinning, Shin'ichi went, but he grabbed Kaito's arm and pulled him along.

Surprised into compliance, Kaito landed braced close to Shin'ichi's chest. "Um," he said again.

"So?"

"So what?"

"So are we doing this, or what?" Shin'ichi's gaze was only expectant, curious without judgment or fear of rejection.

Kaito swallowed down the leap in his chest. He couldn't pull away; it hurt to even consider. "Yes?"

And that was how Kaito found himself half in Kudou Shin'ichi's lap, being kissed with enough languid, exploratory interest to leave him breathless. His whole body was hot and fizzing like champagne just from the bond singing in his veins, and between that and the actual kissing, his mind was close to blank from the mix of inputs.

The thought that Akako might be watching drifted through his mind, but Kaito brushed it away. Let her see. Kaito wouldn't be ashamed for stealing this moment of comfort.

Under the sheer tactile sensations and irresistible feeling of Shin'ichi carefully tugging on his lower lip with his teeth, Kaito couldn't repress the hope that wanted to surge in him. Maybe, maybe, maybe —

Eventually, Shin'ichi pressed him back with a hand on his chest. His lips were red and swollen from kisses, and his eyes were glassy. He swallowed hard before speaking. "Ah — your heist?"

Hell. Kaito fished in his pocket and found his phone. Fifteen minutes left until he had to start his performance. But he'd done this exact heist by rote so many times, by now...

"I've still got time," he said. "Five more minutes, and then we can think about handcuffs and knock-out gas, okay?"

Shin'ichi just shook his head, clearly repressing a smile, but the pressure keeping Kaito back lessened, letting him lean back in.

Maybe it was the proximity to the impending adrenaline, or just knowing he'd be torn away soon, but this time there was nothing slow or careful about the way they kissed. His hands found their way half into Shin'ichi's sport coat, and Shin'ichi had threaded a few fingers under the nearly invisible seam of his body suit, fingers pressing against Kaito's neck and bare back. It sent shivers all the way down his spine until he pressed in closer, muffling a faint groan into the corner of Shin'ichi's mouth.

Kaito blindly tugged back the collar of Shin'ichi's shirt, loosening his tie in the process, and broke away, dragging his lips up Shin'ichi's jaw until he could catch his earlobe for just a breath of a tease, and then dropped his face into the small space he'd created.

He gave himself a moment to catch his breath, running his tongue along the base of his throat, before he selected a spot and applied due force to it, teeth and frustrated suction, wanting so very much to not have to leave, to just _stay_ , to have Shin'ichi realize at last that the space between them wasn't natural in the least.

But the seconds ticked down in the back of his mind and finally he broke away for one final kiss on the mouth, deep enough that Shin'ichi was left gasping and short of breath. He was _gorgeous_ , flushed cheeks and dilated pupils and keen interest. Kaito wanted to cry from the injustice of having to pull away.

"Something to remember me by," he managed, straightening Shin'ichi's collar and fixing his tie to give his hands something to do and his eyes somewhere to look. "In case this lonely night takes us far apart once more." The persona of KID was like a comforting blanket on a cold evening, and he let himself scurry to hide below it. "I suppose I'll be seeing you soon, then, Meitantei."

And he dropped a smoke bomb and fled.

Kaito took refuge in the ladies' restroom to assess the damage. His makeup was visibly smeared, lipstick gone entirely, lips just as kiss-bruised as Shin'ichi's had looked. His wig was a mess, though he didn't remember Shin'ichi touching it. Nothing about him screamed, "Criminal in disguise," though — only, "Girl whose boyfriend had tried to seduce her in a back hallway," — so Kaito just took out his makeup kit and set to work on rapid damage control. Good thing there was nobody to see how much of a mess he looked. Probably.

Didn't need the lipstick anymore. Just change the contours, raise his cheekbones and re-alter his bone structure to the wandering eye. He'd put on the KID face so many times by now; it came almost as instinctive to apply as his own was to look at. The wig he fixed only enough to pass muster for a few minutes.

From there, it was just the quick trick of reordering the way his makeup was packed away to facilitate the quick-change he'd be pulling shortly. He _should_ have done this all an hour ago, but improv would do just as well. It had been worth it. It needed to have been worth it, because he was breathing through something like a stitch in his side, a quickened heartbeat that refused to settle, an ache that took up his entire torso.

If Shin'ichi was feeling some kind of bleed over from the raw wound that was Kaito's half of the bond, please. Please, let him understand what it was, and soon, because —

Because Kaito wasn't sure how much longer he could make it.

* * *

The next morning was bad. Kaito didn't go to classes. He kept the curtains firmly shut and curled up in bed instead.

The semi-darkness helped soothe the headache threatening at his temples. He massaged them, grimacing against the muscle tension that continued to pull on his vertebrae. Apparently the situation was getting to him. Likely only the fact that he reset back to a pre-tension body so often was keeping him from being laid out with a stress-induced virus.

Physically — physically he wasn't terribly off. Beyond the headache and the mild strain, he was alright. The fatigue that was sucking him downwards had a different culprit.

Kaito's mind was blanketed in a foggy layer of full out crushing exhaustion. Every time he closed his eyes, he came up against the simple fact that he wasn't physically tired enough to sleep, but his mind was uninclined to let him do anything else. Even thinking about trying to puzzle out the new twists of the situation made his head pound.

It was just easier to close his eyes and pretend he was just a lazy university student having a lie in.

Ha. Kaito had never been very good at lying to himself.

So, he'd kissed Shin'ichi. They'd kissed, and Shin'ichi had been — interested. Perhaps it shouldn't have been so surprising. They were soulmates, and their relationship had always been… contentious. Energetic? There had been an electrical current running between them from the moment he had looked up and seen him in that helicopter, gun still pointed outward, Nakamori still swearing Kaito's ears off.

Last night, Shin'ichi hadn't seemed… amorous, exactly? Just interested. Curious, maybe, and not immune to whatever raw sex appeal Kaito had managed to exude from underneath the layers of cosmetics and costume.

Not exactly falling into Kaito's arms with the ardor of someone who thought their love had been one-sided, but. Well. Kaito wasn't in love with him, either.

Not yet.

(Though if the loops dragged on another twenty rounds—)

Kaito firmly told himself not to think about that. He'd keep putting one foot before the other (not that he had any other choice) and see where the world was turning to.

And maybe he'd pay Akako another visit, some time when his heart and mind didn't feel like one giant bruise of confused longing and loneliness. When he felt coherent again.

Nothing short of more time in Shin'ichi's company was going to do that right now, but Kaito wasn't sure how great a plan that was. Heist nights were one thing, but he had little idea how well it would go if he turned up during the day. Besides, he'd thrown something of a wrench into the predictability of the outcome tongue-first.

Gods. He'd kissed him, and Shin'ichi had kissed back.

Kaito's life made little sense anymore, but he couldn't help wanting to cling to that little piece of information. Not exactly interested, not yet, but… It was a chance. Maybe it had just been a heat of the moment thing, at the heist. Maybe Shin'ichi would turn him down flat outside of one.

But if he knew they were soulmates… That kind of knowledge had been known to cross great barriers to bring people together.

Kaito laboriously dragged himself out of bed, shivering. The things that were wrong with him weren't going to be fixed by most mundane tricks, but he couldn't see how it would hurt to go through the motions of ordinary life.

He could probably just reset. Should, maybe. Start the day fresh, try to gauge if Shin'ichi had carried over any knowledge of what had happened during yesterday-again.

Not that he really wanted to put in the effort of going through the heist again, but… Kaito couldn't help but suspect that a jaunt with Shin'ichi outside of it just might manage to be a tipping point.

Decided, he reached for his phone. He'd call Aoko and trip the curse to start a new loop.


	7. Collide

Kaito woke up bright and early, feeling more refreshed than he had in an… unknown amount of time. The anticipation of seeing Shin'ichi bubbled in him, fizzing contentedly in his chest. The ache had lessened an almost frightening degree, if Kaito cared to pay attention to it.

But he didn't. Not much he could do for it, one way or another. He decided to count himself lucky that he was able to think more clearly today and just get on with things.

He didn't really bother with a disguise. Shin'ichi had seen his face enough times by now to have a decent idea what he looked like. And Kaito didn't really feel like putting in the effort. He put on some regular clothes, dabbed on a little mascara and lip gloss just to keep things interesting, and strolled out the secret exit. While no longer passable by car, it was still safe enough for a human to use.

Kaito really had no idea what to do about the car. Someday when all this was over, maybe he'd get some help for it. Pretend the secret room had been an ordinary workshop his dad had built. Something like that.

But for now: twenty-five minutes on the train, another ten by bus, and he found himself on the streets of Beika. He had a hat, which he wore to fend off anyone who might mistake him for Shin'ichi, and the walk was pleasant enough. No rain, hovering just on the edge of too cold. His pulse was pattering in time with the ache in his chest, and he was filled with anticipation.

Kaito contemplated social niceties all the way to the Kudou mansion. To knock or not to knock… as much as he didn't want to start this visit off with a soccer ball to the face, the temptation to let himself in was just too strong.

He popped the lock on a side window and climbed inside noiselessly, tugging off his shoes while perched on the windowsill. Once his socked feet were safely inside, he locked the window behind himself and went to swap his shoes for a pair of guest slippers — probably Mouri Ran's, at a guess. The ceiling above him creaked with a brief pattern of footsteps, and Kaito's chest temporarily made a valiant effort to overpower common sense.

None of that, now. Forcing himself to set aside the habitual silence to his movements, Kaito made his way to the kitchen and started making tea.

The clatter of dishes from Kaito's attempts to navigate an unfamiliar kitchen must've been enough to do the trick, because as he was pouring the tea, the big staircase creaked under the weight of its owner. Kaito hastily remembered to vanish away his hat and ran a hand through his hair to reinvigorate it.

The familiar _snick_ of the dart watch announced Shin'ichi's arrival just moments after the bond rolled over and began purring in his chest. Kaito took his hands off the tea tray and turned around with them still raised. The merciless concentration on Shin'ichi's face turned to the shock of recognition. _"You,"_ he said. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Kaito gestured behind himself. "Making tea, at the moment. Where do you entertain guests in this absurdly large house? I'll put the tray in there."

Shin'ichi continued to blatantly stare at him over the target-face of his watch, and Kaito politely looked away, busying himself instead with lifting the tray with both hands. He could have juggled all its contents one-handed, of course, but that wouldn't do much to give the appearance of harmlessness.

"It depends," Shin'ichi said finally. "For you? Library, maybe. Do you like books?"

"Oh, yes," Kaito assured him. "I read mostly fiction, though, if I'm not researching."

"Well, we have plenty of that." Shin'ichi snapped his watch shut and stepped back into the doorway to lead him there. "Mostly crime fiction, though, so you might find yourself at odds with the content."

Kaito smiled to himself as he followed. "Not at all," he said. "I enjoy a good mystery as much as the next crime-adjacent type. Not exclusively, though. And I like modern stuff more than dusty old Edwardian novels." They made their way up the stairs, Shin'ichi walking nearly sideways to keep an eye on him.

"You do know crime fiction is even less accurate than the Detective Samonji TV adaptation was to the books, right? You won't outsmart us that way."

Kaito breathed out a laugh. "Don't worry; I don't take cues from novels. That's what spy-cams are for."

"Oh, because that's not creepy at all," Shin'ichi muttered. "Through here." He gestured to a door, nudging it open for Kaito to go first.

"Never said it wasn't," Kaito said. "Just an unfortunate necessity. Come on, Meitantei, I'm not here to knock you out and do horrible things to your reputation." He set the tray down on the table and took a seat while Shin'ichi continued to hover indecisively in the doorway.

"Wow. I feel completely reassured by this incredibly normal and unalarming statement." Nonetheless, he stepped inside, choosing one of the armchairs to lean against, watching Kaito with raised eyebrows.

"I'm glad! You know me — always trying to put you at ease." Kaito grinned his favorite shark grin up at him. "Tea?"

He poured some for Shin'ichi, who watched him like a hawk and then sniffed his cup suspiciously, and then poured some for himself. He didn't really feel much in the mood for tea, being a little jittery from proximity and focused on not showing it, but it was the spirit of the thing that mattered.

"So?" Shin'ichi prodded, and Kaito was forcefully reminded of the way Shin'ichi had kissed him.

"So, what?"

"So, why are you here? Is someone framing you for murder again?" Shin'ichi finally took a tiny sip of tea, and then waited, presumably for Kaito to answer the question or for some kind of neutralizing poison to paralyze him.

"Oh, no, nothing like that. Maybe I just thought it had been too long since we spent any quality time together, hm?" Kaito took a sip of tea and inspected the walls of the library. He'd been here once before, while trying to figure Conan out. It was a lot less gloomy, with clear signs of occupant decorating the room.

"There is a heist in ten hours," Shin'ichi said flatly. He absentmindedly took another swallow of tea before staring at the cup in consternated betrayal. Kaito carefully hid his smile in his own cup.

"Sure, sure, where I'll have to share you with Nakamori-keibu and Haku — Hakuba-tantei-san, and what, a million guests? That's hardly quality time, is it?" Gods, Kaito was more tired than he thought if he was making basic slips. The clamoring ache in his chest wasn't helping matters either.

Shin'ichi's gaze had sharpened. "That's not how you normally refer to him. Hell, you usually leave Hakuba's name off entirely. He was right, wasn't he? When he said he'd met you."

Well, "met" was better than "suffered through the adolescent trials of high school with." Still, Kaito groaned and flopped to rest his arms and chin in a pile on the arm of the chair. "If I say maybe, are you going to sprint to phone the police? I've met a lot of the task force. As a civilian, not just under cover. There, will that satisfy you? You can tell them whatever you like, but later, okay? Can we just — "

That was far more than he'd intended to say. Kaito cut himself off with a sigh. "No, it's fine. I won't stop you if you call them. It won't — matter, because — uh — won't matter too long?" He rubbed his eyes with his palms, trying to push the vertigo-inducing dizziness away. "It's fine."

When he finally looked up again, Shin'ichi was watching him intently. It took a few seconds for him to finally reply to Kaito.

"Pretty bad, then?" Shin'ichi asked somewhat pointedly.

Kaito grimaced and shrugged. "It's — been complicated. Wish I could say more, but — well, even if I could, you probably wouldn't believe me."

Shin'ichi's eyebrows flew up again, and, oh no, he looked intrigued. Kaito had just thrown him a mystery bone to gnaw on, hadn't he?

"What _can_ you tell me?" Shin'ichi leaned forward, eyes gleaming in the light from the windows.

Kaito thought for a long moment. "There's...a girl in my regular life who… took issue with something I decided to pursue, and she — took action to make the depth of her ire clear to me. And now I'm — stuck." Light-headedness threatened him for a moment after the final word before relenting.

Shin'ichi, seemingly unaware he was doing so, was rubbing his chin in thought. Kaito's heart twisted with brief, miserable affection. "And when you said that your revealing of personal details wouldn't matter for long — are you in danger?"

Kaito shook his head. "She hasn't tried to hurt me in years. I don't think I'll be able to explain why it doesn't matter, though. Sorry, I guess. Didn't mean to get your murder hackles up." He rubbed a hand through his hair absent-mindedly, drumming his fingers on the table. "She's… I'm not sure she knows she's doing something… wrong? I don't think she had many adults around, growing up, and there were probably — some bad influences. I don't know; she's weird. We were never exactly close." He wondered if Akako was listening, what she thought of the way he described her.

"Everything you're saying is the opposite of reassuring. You know that, right?"

Kaito shifted his posture, swapping to sitting cross-legged in the chair. "It's not exactly a very assured situation to be in, either. I don't think her intention is to hurt me. She just wants me to… do something I really don't want to do."

Shin'ichi leaned forward. "So she's blackmailing you."

Kaito considered that, absent-mindedly chewing on his lower lip. "I… I guess so? Not through traditional methods. She's just… making my life miserable until I…" He trailed off. The specifics probably came too close to the truth for the curse to allow, anyway. "Well, it's a mess. But I'm not here to make you fix it, if that's what you were thinking."

"No? Seems like a first, then." Shin'ichi finally slid off his perch to actually sit in the chair. "So? Can I ask what's actually brought you here?"

Kaito considered the question thoughtfully. "No," he decided. "I'm curious to see if you'll figure it out. Plus if I ply you with a mystery, you're less likely to murder me in cold blood for the dreadful crime of existing in your vicinity."

Shin'ichi rolled his eyes. "What, like you wouldn't dodge? Try your pity play on someone else."

"Hey, I'll have you know you've nearly taken my face off via football at least five times. Probably more like five dozen, you complete nightmare." Kaito leaned back and stretched the kinks out of his back. "So? What do you have to do for fun around here?"

* * *

Shin'ichi ended up unearthing an old chess board, which was so typical that Kaito just _had_ to make fun of him. But they played, and Kaito enjoyed himself. He hadn't played since high school and Aoko's ill-fated KID Capture Brigade. They'd all gathered in Hakuba's home for the afternoon. Kaito had gotten pulled into a death match with Akako that had lasted a solid hour.

Funny how, years later, he couldn't actually remember which of them had won.

Regardless, he and his troublemaker of a meitantei played a round, and Kaito only cheated once — twice if he counted the time Shin'ichi had caught him.

And it was fun. Normal, ordinary and enjoyable. If Kaito tried hard enough to forget, he could almost pretend that they were together, spending an average Sunday in each other's company.

Unfortunately, despite all his practice on other people, Kaito wasn't very good at lying to himself.

Shin'ichi eventually won the match and Kaito declined to go another round. Instead, he dragged Shin'ichi down to the kitchen with him and declared that he was going to make them lunch. He wasn't exactly a fantastic cook, but he could do more than get by, despite the years of mooching off of Aoko. He'd taken to helping her in the last year or two, and that had done a lot to improve his skills.

It took a little persuasion to get Shin'ichi to sit down and stop fussing about letting a guest cook for him without contributing, but eventually he gave in. He instead settled nearby to watch Kaito with his usual unnervingly acute scrutiny. Kaito, to his mild dismay, found that he was charmed by it — and by the way it made the bond relax into something warm that almost didn't hurt at all.

He didn't make anything fancy, but Shin'ichi didn't seem to have any unvoiced complaints, at least.

They ate in relative silence for a few minutes before Kaito cleared his throat. "Could I tempt you into a different game, Meitantei?"

The wary, appraising look was back. "That would depend on the game," Shin'ichi replied, eyeing Kaito over the top of his bowl. "How much havoc will it wreak on my house?"

Kaito waved the question off. "Would I really do such a thing? No, I was thinking something more mundane. Suitable to your age, maybe."

" _Our_ age." Shin'ichi set down his chopsticks. "You have my attention."

"Two truths and a lie. I think that should be tempting enough for you. Not to mention I know a few of your actual secrets already." Kaito took another bite, feeling sure he would take the bait.

Shin'ichi eyed him skeptically. "How can I know you'll actually tell the truth?"

Kaito laid a mock-offended hand to his chest. "On my honor as a phantom thief, I will speak no words except truthful ones. Except for the lies the game requires. On my honor, I will speak only one lie per every — "

"Okay, okay, I get it." Shinichi took his final bite before leaning back in his chair. " _I_ will wash up. We can start your little game while I do."

Kaito bit down another smile, instead raising an eyebrow. "Well, thanks ever so much. I'm guessing you want me to go first, yeah?"

"You guess correctly." Shin'ichi stole Kaito's empty bowl and made his way to the sink while Kaito thought. It had been a suggestion made on impulse, and he didn't have anything prepared.

"I think," he began at last, raising his voice to be heard over the water, "I think you would make an excellent phantom thief, I don't think I have discovered all the puns in my real name, and I have always disliked the girl who is — blackmailing me."

"The last one's a lie," Shin'ichi said immediately. "Were you even trying?"

"Just starting us off easy. No comment about you making a good thief?"

Shin'ichi snorted. "You have to know how to commit crimes to solve them. And I know I tend to keep things unorthodox."

"Fair enough! Your turn, then."

Shin'ichi hummed absently as he thought. "I...met the first KID, I solved a KID riddle when I was six, and both of my parents met him."

Kaito pulled a face. "Six — the first time?"

Shin'ichi scowled. "Yes, obviously."

He thought it over. His dad had competed with Kudou Yuusaku, that was true, though he wasn't sure about his mother. His father had kept records, but many of them were coded in a frustratingly obtuse cipher. But...he was relatively certain his dad had kept out of his pursuants' personal lives. Shin'ichi finding a riddle among his father's papers and solving it, though — Kaito could believe that quite easily.

"You didn't meet him," he guessed.

Shin'ichi broke out of his studiously not giving anything away posture with a grin. "Oh, I definitely met him. I'm actually guessing on the last one though — my mother has never outright said she met him, but she sure as hell has implied it."

Kaito swallowed around a dry throat. "And the riddle?"

"There was a riddle, yeah, but — well, I was six. I think he expected me to go to my dad when I was stuck. Underestimated how, uh, stubborn I can be. I solved it for real when I was Conan, though."

That...was a lot of secrets hanging in the open air between them. Kaito licked his lips. "Guess you won that round. Shall we try again?"

Shinichi dried his hands off and turned to face him. "Sure. Here, though, or in the library?"

"Oh — the library's probably better. I don't mind relocating."

They did so, and Kaito settled himself comfortably in a chair this time. The bond still wanted him to crawl into Shin'ichi's lap and lick his face for attention, but it was much easier to ignore when it wasn't grinding him to dust from the inside out. "So, hm, my turn…" He wondered if it was possible to lead Shin'ichi in a useful direction. "I've never been in love, I've kissed both boys and girls, and I don't like long walks on the beach."

Shin'ichi huffed out a laugh. "I'm guessing the beach one is true — it's very specific." Kaito shrugged in willing acknowledgement. "You've…" he eyed Kaito's face — oh. Probably he was specifically looking at the makeup. "You've been in love."

Kaito thought for a moment of wistful melancholy of the easy days before KID, when he had shyly begun to think of Aoko as something inevitable. "Mm. Sure was."

Shin'ichi just nodded, looking neither surprised nor overwhelmed with curiosity. Kaito supposed lots of people had doomed young loves, even phantom thieves.

Though Kaito supposed there was a small chance he was just trying to be polite.

"My turn, then?" Shin'ichi asked instead.

"Sure, yes. Let's see what you come up with." Kaito waved him on.

They went a few more rounds like this, at one point devolving briefly into a spirited conversation about high school clubs, before Shin'ichi unwittingly threw a bombshell into the game.

"My parents were not prepared to raise a child, I regret my friendship with the kids — the shounen tantei, you remember, and I've met my soulmate."

Kaito was quiet for a long moment, heart in his throat, bond surging forward to demand all his brainpower to control. Shin'ichi didn't _look_ like he was implying anything, limbs strewn casual and relaxed across his chair. Kaito made sure he was breathing relatively normally before continuing.

"You regret befriending them?"

Shin'ichi blew out a rough sigh. "Yeah. Not having known them, or — taking refuge in their company, but — _being_ their friend? I was involved in things most adults would count themselves lucky to never encounter. I'm still in touch with them; they all have nightmares."

Kaito nodded carefully. "They always seemed...very fearless."

"Yes. And without me helping supervise, they've run themselves into serious trouble a few times." Shin'ichi rubbed his forehead tiredly. "They're good kids, but they'd be better off with an ordinary capacity for danger."

"That...must be hard. For all of you." Kaito stretched his legs out and chose his words carefully. "So, that third one…"

That dragged Shin'ichi out of his thoughts. "Oh. Yes. Well, we're young. It's not exactly unusual to not have met them."

"Mm, you're right, of course."

Shin'ichi raised an eyebrow. "Why? Have you…?"

Kaito bit his lip, thinking furiously. How close could he get? He'd rather tiptoe closer and leave Shin'ichi reason for curiosity than go too far and force a reset.

"More than once," he settled on. "I...you meet a lot of unusual people, in my line of work."

Shin'ichi, head cocked to the side, gaze intent, was clearly interested in pursuing the topic, though it would be considered crass of him to pry openly. Kaito decided it was time to dissemble.

He slid his phone out of his pocket in a motion quick enough to fool the eyes. "If you'll pardon the interruption, I need to make sure my associates aren't beside themselves without my guidance." He winked. "It'll only be a moment."

Hoping that Shin'ichi would be curious to know how much he was withholding, he turned the screen on, and, yep. Kaito had ignored the time by which he was supposed to be in touch, and accordingly had two texts and a missed call from Jii.

With only some of the guilt he probably should feel, Kaito told him that he needed to cancel, and then turned his phone off. Jii was unlikely to use GPS tracking against him, but if he got worried enough to ask around, Aoko would have no such compunctions.

"Alright, then." Kaito vanished his phone up his sleeve and smiled winsomely. "Where were we?"

* * *

Night began to fall, and Shin'ichi was clearly beginning to wonder when Kaito was planning to leave for the heist.

The time at which he was supposed to steal the necklace was around 22:30. It was only 16:40 now, but Shin'ichi usually arrived early for his heists.

The polite thing to do would probably have been to warn Shin'ichi that he was cancelling. Instead, he stretched out, insolently draped his legs over the arm of the chair, and beamed innocently at Shin'ichi.

He immediately earned himself a wary look. "What chaos are you planning now?"

"Would you believe me if I said absolutely none at all?" Kaito intensified the innocence of his expression. "For shame, Meitantei! I am but a poor maligned magician, persecuted for practicing my act in my chosen medium. You young folks have no appreciation for true mastery these days." He tsked loudly and followed it up with an exaggerated sigh.

"Right. Remind me, how old are you again?"

Kaito batted his eyelashes in an overdramatic, KID-like fashion. "I'm a youthful forty-five, though you might not be able to tell! My moisturizing routine can be very demanding."

Shin'ichi burst out laughing, making something warm and gratified spread out in Kaito's chest. "Forty-five, huh? And how do you explain the skin elasticity, then?"

Kaito put on a haughtily superior tone. "Full body prosthetics."

They both lasted only a few seconds before bursting out laughing. "Sounds sweaty," Shin'ichi said, shaking his head judgmentally.

"Gods, yeah, I go through sweat-proof makeup like candy. Anyway, I think I'm most of a year ahead of you? I'd already been KID a year when you got all tiny and vengeful."

Shin'ichi was outright shocked silent by the nonchalant honesty in Kaito's voice. When he snuck a glance his way, Shin'ichi was staring.

"Too much?" Kaito kept his voice deliberately light. "I can go slower if that makes it better for you, darling."

That got him to blush and look away. "Shut up. No. You just surprised me. We aren't usually…. Usually we go right back to being at odds, when we're done with…"

Kaito glanced sidelong at Shin'ichi through his eyelashes. "Well, maybe I got tired of pretending we weren't friends. Or maybe it's something completely unrelated to any of that. Your guess, Meitante."

He waited through a long pause as Shin'ichi gathered his thoughts. "I mean...it's obvious you're in some kind of mood," he finally replied, haltingly. "I think…. Are you going to leave for your heist soon?"

"No," Kaito said flatly.

Shin'ichi only nodded, looking unsurprised. "Did...the woman who's blackmailing you. Did she… what are her demands, her goals in extorting you?"

Kaito debated for a long minute whether to reply. Eventually, he got up and stretched out the stiffness creeping into his legs. "Oh, the usual. Just a simple sacrifice of my freedom of mind and bodily autonomy." He hopped over the low table and perched himself on the arm of Shin'ichi's chair instead. "She hates not being able to possess something, and equally dislikes any who fall to her charms without a fight. I think I'd make quite the prize for the collection, don't you?"

He finally looked down at Shin'ichi's expression and found it utterly appalled. Kaito looked away again with an inward wince. "Look, I'm not saying it'll happen."

"But whatever she has hanging over your head must be pretty bad if you came to me for comfort," Shin'ichi surmised. "KID…"

Kaito couldn't help the defensive hunch to his shoulders. "I'm handling it, okay? I just wanted to get my mind off it for a day, that's all."

"And I'm supposed to think you picked me, with no hidden motive?"

Oh, Kaito had a motive alright. It just wasn't what Shin'ichi was thinking. "Leave off, Meitantei."

"No." Shin'ichi sat up, expression fierce with determination. "I can help. _Let_ me help, KID."

He was very much a dog with a bone. Kaito despaired of getting him to drop it without significant conversational maneuvering. "Kudou…" Kaito rubbed his face tiredly. "I can't _tell_ you the real thing behind all of this, alright? If you want to know, I'll need you to deduce it."

Now that really brought his attention to a razor-sharp point. "What about a hint? There must be _something_ you can tell me."

Kaito tucked two fingers into Shin'ichi's shirt collar and leaned down to ever-so-gently kiss him. The bond had wanted him to do it for hours. _Kaito_ had wanted to do it for hours. There, Meitantei, how's that for a hint?

When they broke apart, Shin'ichi's eyes were wide. "KID…?"

Kaito busied himself fiddling with the top button of Shin'ichi's shirt. "I… came here because I wanted company. _Your_ company. It...doesn't have to be this. I just…" Don't want to be alone in this anymore.

Shin'ichi seemed to read the thought off his body language. "If...if you're sure this is what you want," he said quietly — almost gravely, "then I…"

He knocked Kaito's hand out of the way and undid the button himself before glancing up again, almost nervously. "Yes?"

Kaito swallowed against the strange ravenous hunger that flared inside him. It — wasn't desire or attraction as he'd known it. There was something deeper to it, something intense and as sweetly longing as a blade for blood. "Yes. Please."

So, Shin'ichi took him to bed. Not _his_ bed — just one of the various guest rooms in this ridiculously oversized house (thought at least it wasn't as big as Hakuba's). The bedsheets were cool to the touch, and Shin'ichi looked at him with curiosity, cataloguing each bit of skin as he revealed it. He touched the freckles on Kaito's shoulders with such uncharacteristic gentleness that Kaito had to take a moment to bite down the tears of relief that briefly threatened the moment.

It wasn't enough, wasn't the same as a fully realized soul bond would have been, but it was like a cool balm on inflamed skin, being this close to him.

Kaito decided he liked the way Shin'ichi kissed. It was intense and lingering and thorough, just like Shin'ichi himself. Kaito wanted to sink into the unexpected kindness of how Shin'ichi touched him and drown in it.

And for a few long, glorious minutes, he did.

Being able to give something of himself to Shin'ichi in turn was its own kind of pleasure. Kaito had always liked being the center of his attention, but this wasn't why, not entirely. It felt like for once Kaito was creating something good, something that didn't hurt anyone.

Something just for the two of them.

When it was over they stayed in bed a while longer, talking in hushed voices and making each other laugh. Shin'ichi kept being drawn back to play with Kaito's hair. Kaito found to his surprise that he didn't mind the feeling of being documented, laid out for Shin'ichi's analytical mind to catalogue.

Kaito said something that, try as he might, he would not be able to remember later, and a little wrinkle of a smile formed along Shin'ichi's eyes. "You know," Shin'ichi said, "it's funny. I feel like I know you better than I actually do, but I don't think I've ever seen you act like yourself — your real self, I mean — as much as you have tonight. You're not exactly what I expected, somehow."

"Oh?" Kaito poked the little crinkle of thought between Shin'ichi's eyebrows.

Shin'ichi batted him away. "Yeah. Your jokes are terrible, and you're nowhere near as mature as you pretend."

Kaito burst out laughing at that. When he caught his breath again, he said, "I'll tell you a secret: the immaturity is an act, too. Didn't used to be that way, but being KID, uh, made me grow up faster than I could explain away."

"Ah, yeah." Shin'ichi shifted to get more comfortable without dislodging Kaito from his loose-limbed sprawl across him. "Being Conan was like that. It's hard to explain away how you've learned to constantly be looking over your shoulder."

Kaito vividly remembered how tense and on edge Conan had always been. "Mmhm. It sucks."

They were both quiet for a minute before Shin'ichi spoke again. "So — were you planning to stay the night? I'm free tomorrow, if you're in need of further company."

Kaito finally unwrapped his limbs from across Shin'ichi to stretch out the tension remaining in his muscles. "I mean, I'll be alright; I can get out of your hair. But if you really don't mind…" He shot Shin'ichi a questioning look, and got an encouraging shrug in reply. "Then… yeah. Company would be nice."

"We have a different guest room you can use," Shin'ichi added. "I'm not going to stick you with, uh, this one." He gestured vaguely at the still-damp sheets, and Kaito laughed, and for a moment the empty half of the bond in his chest didn't ache at all.


	8. Red and Blue

Kaito woke up slowly, disoriented by the foreign bed and unknown location. It took a few long, blinking seconds before he remembered where he was.

And before he remembered, oh gods, what he'd done.

The chances that Shin'ichi would spontaneously fix Kaito's plight in the next few days were small at best, and that meant — that Kaito would end up resetting again, when he couldn't stand the idea of not going back anymore.

And Kaito had slept with him.

He sat up in bed, hunched over, trying to breathe through the wave of queasiness that overtook him. Kaito had no right to sleep with someone and then just erase the memory that it ever happened. It seemed unbelievably unfair to him, the idea that he would go on knowing what it was like to go to Kudou Shin'ichi's bed with him, but Shin'ichi would have no idea that Kaito had this knowledge. It sickened him. It felt like a violation in some way he couldn't put his finger on, and not just because…

Kaito needed a lot of deep breaths to fight off the nausea at the thought that Akako could easily have watched the whole thing.

Not to mention that the idea of looking Shin'ichi in the face, knowing what it was like to be allowed so close to him, while Shin'ichi looked back with no shared understanding of the strange intimacy that had blossomed — it made something in Kaito's chest seize up with misery.

Resetting, losing the good moments and conversations that had happened, there was never anything pleasant about that. But losing this...

Eventually Kaito got up. He put on the clean clothes that Shin'ichi had lended him and eyed himself in the bathroom mirror. He looked — fine. Clean and well-rested and smartly dressed. Only his eyes looked back at him with even a modicum of the horror he felt.

But then again, Kaito had always been good at lying with his face.

Resigned, he collected his things and stowed them away. They'd agreed to hang out today. Kaito could at least have that before he reset, couldn't he? Was it better to cut it off now, before the new intimacy could go any further? Or was it better to resist resetting as long as possible, regardless of the guilt still coiled in Kaito's stomach?

He didn't know.

Kaito found Shin'ichi down in the kitchen, brewing coffee and scrounging up food for breakfast. "Hey," he said, and — smiled at Kaito. "You didn't vanish."

"Sure didn't," Kaito replied, slinking further into the room. He reached for a genuine smile inside himself and managed to fish out something approximating it. "I, ah. Good morning?"

"Good morning to you, too," Shin'ichi said, turning back to the counter. "How does an egg sound?"

"Oh — that's fine. I'll eat nearly anything."

"Nearly?"

"There's an exception, of course." Kaito leaned against the counter near him. "This one you could definitely use against me at a heist, though, so I'll keep it to myself."

That earned him a raised eyebrow. "Is it an allergy? I wouldn't condone sending you into anaphylaxis just to win a competition."

Kaito grimaced. "A phobia, actually. I wouldn't be able to set foot in the building." Though it was sweet to hear that Shin'ichi thought of their little games as competitions rather than something dull like justice in action.

Shin'ichi frowned. "I doubt I'd condone using something like that against you, either. It would reveal that I had intimate knowledge of your physiology, for one, which wouldn't be easily explained away. But it would hardly be fair, either."

That… certainly was a way to phrase it. Luckily, Kaito was good at faking shamelessness. He offered Shin'ichi a one-sided shrug. "Then maybe I'll tell you someday."

"That's fine. I can be patient." Shin'ichi handed him his bowl. "Do you drink coffee?"

"Yes, if you have sugar to put in it."

With an amused noise, Shin'ichi shooed him out of the room. "Of course you'd have a sweet tooth. I'll be right behind you with the rest of this."

Kaito let himself be shooed and went to sit at the low table instead. He wondered if Shin'ichi usually bothered with this, or if he ate in the kitchen when it was just him. Kaito himself was often too lazy to bother, or the table too covered in homework to eat at.

A mystery to unravel another day. Shin'ichi had appeared to join him, bringing with him not only his breakfast and the coffee, but also a box of sugar cubes.

Kaito took four from it: three for the cup, and one to pop directly into his mouth for the sole purpose of making Shin'ichi pull a face. Internally, he came to the decision that he wouldn't reset yet. He — felt like he needed this, somehow. That it might offer him necessary stability for whatever would come next.

Probably it would only make the soul bond ache in his chest that much worse, impeding his ability to function, but Kaito couldn't bring himself to care very much. It was worth it, _had_ to be worth it for the pleasure of seeing Shin'ichi like this, unreserved and in his element.

They ate and discussed what they would do. They bounced a few ideas back and forth, not quite coming to a consensus too easily, but in the end, they agreed to visit a tea shop in a different part of the city where Shin'ichi had once solved a case without too much debate. Kaito retrieved his bag of tools and useful items that he'd hidden when he'd first entered, tucked away yesterday's clothes inside, and slung it over one shoulder. Shin'ichi was blatantly curious about its contents, and Kaito used it to annoy him, smiling innocently as he rummaged through to extract a slender leather tool roll and stowed it in one of the many pockets inside his coat.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Let's go," Shin'ichi agreed.

They took the train — a different line than any of the ones Kaito usually took — out of the quiet ward of Beika and deeper into the city. It had been a while since Kaito had anyone to go places with that wasn't Aoko (or occasionally Hakuba). He supposed he went out with Akako, sometimes, but those ones almost always involved Aoko, too. Kaito preferred to avoid her if there weren't other people with them, so in some ways it was helpful that he usually encountered her at the Blue Parrot, where they would be surrounded by people.

Of course, he also hated it when she came to the Blue Parrot, because she would spend half the time watching him. At least Jii understood she was dangerous and didn't try to set them up, because Kaito was sure he would have if Kaito hadn't explained a bit of the situation.

Regardless — it was interesting to be out with someone new. The quiet of the train limited their ability to talk, which was probably for the best, considering their respective lines of work. No need to alarm the public too badly.

But even so, for the most part… It was just nice. It made Kaito feel almost normal. Even without all of this mess, being KID meant that Kaito almost never felt like just an ordinary college student. After they got off the train, they walked and had normal (ish) conversations about their lives, Kaito intending to stick to vague anecdotes but not trying all that hard, either. What did it matter if Shin'ichi did track him down? It would be interesting to see what happened, and it wasn't like there would be any permanent consequences.

"It must be difficult to find people who can keep up with you," Shin'ichi remarked after Kaito finished telling a story about some of the chaos he'd pulled in early high school, before Hakuba or Akako had arrived to stir the pot.

Kaito laughed awkwardly. "I guess, yeah. But my best friend, she usually can. Or she knows me well enough to get in the way and trip me up if I try to outpace her. She's — kind of like your Mouri-san, only louder, ruder, and with, uh, very little patience for the kind of bullshit I try to spin. I mean, there had to be someone to keep me on my toes outside of heists, you know? I'd have blown up our high school if there hadn't been, probably."

Shin'ichi hummed in acknowledgement. "I know the feeling. I was bored out of my mind through all of middle and high school. I can only imagine it was the same for you, if not worse. You've always seemed like… a very active person to me. I'm usually pretty good at sitting in one place and studying. Comes with having a writer in the family — they always want you to sit down and be quiet with a book so they can work. But your family has at least two phantom thieves."

It took Kaito a startled moment to sort that out and realize Shin'ichi meant his mother and himself. "Uh, yes. Sorry, I forgot I told you about my mom for a second. You're correct on all accounts, and it certainly didn't make for a quiet childhood." He hesitated for a long minute before resuming speech. Shin'ichi already knew at least some information about his dad; would it really be so bad for him to know a little more? "And… there were three of us. Well. Only two at a time, I guess. But I mean, um, my dad. He was…"

"The first one?" Shin'ichi interposed quietly, scanning the crowd for eavesdroppers, but everyone around them was wrapped up in their own lives as they rushed about. "He learned from your mother, yes?"

"Mmhm. He… took over so she could retire quietly because her life was being threatened." Kaito sighed. "Ever the gentleman, I guess. I'm admittedly not doing a perfect job at living up to that part of the role."

"As Ran could attest," Shin'ichi said dryly. "But — yes. I'd guessed at least that much. It seemed… an obvious conclusion to reach, especially with the knowledge about your mother."

Kaito laughed shortly. "Yeah. And my dad's death was public news, so. It's frankly a miracle nobody connected the dots." Almost nobody. He sent Hakuba a mental apology for lying about him.

"I take it people know you're a magician, then."

"Ha, definitely. I had no reason to hide it until it was much too late, and then it would have been suspicious to stop." They waited for a crossing sign, and Kaito chanced a glance sideways. Shin'ichi looked sympathetic but not too curious or pitying. Well, he was probably just masking the curiosity out of politeness, but Kaito still felt warmed by it. "But, yeah. Him and my mom, and now me and my mom, though she's moved abroad. Never a quiet moment."

"I can sympathise with that," Shin'ichi noted as they crossed the street. "My parents are… They have strong personalities. And my mother trained with a famous magician for a while, so there's no end to the nightmares she can inflict on me. She learned disguise from him for her movie roles."

A famous magician who could teach disguise. Well, Kaito knew for a fact there had been more than one of those, but… "I don't suppose you remember his name. The magician, I mean."

Shin'ichi looked apologetic. "No, sorry. I was very young at the time. I think she stopped training with him when I was maybe seven years old. That said, I think something was going on between him and my dad, too. But my dad was also entangled with KID at the time — with your father. So, he was always acting a little strange."

"Yeah…" Kaito spoke automatically, mind racing. It didn't really change anything, but. He still wanted to know with sudden intensity, and Shin'ichi had said before that his mother had likely met his father. "I, uh. Not to impugn on your family's honor, it's just — I know my dad took pupils that he trained in various skills, including disguise. And he was killed when you would've been around seven, yeah."

Shin'ichi nodded thoughtfully. "It's certainly possible that he was the very same magician. I could ask my mother, but she might not tell me, or not outright. She was very fond of him and would probably hesitate to put you at risk. Though even if we're supposing wrong, she's allergic to straight answers and might not tell us anyway."

Kaito managed a laugh despite his dry throat. It seemed so impossible that their lives could have been so intertwined without them ever knowing it. That Shin'ichi's parents and his own were caught in a similar dance to the one that continued today, that their lives had played out side by side before they ever knew each other…

 _Almost like fate,_ he thought, laughing internally at his own disbelief. He supposed he hadn't truly understood the idea of lives being fated to cross paths in such a strange, perfect way.

And if he was reeling at the similarities, maybe Shin'ichi could notice, too.

He glanced sideways, licking his lips nervously, wondering how much he could imply from this before the dizziness set in. "It's — weird how we never met before, huh? If our lives were so — "

And then, of course, somebody screamed.

* * *

"The culprit is you, Sasaki-san," Shin'ichi pronounced.

The circle of onlookers was small: aside from the two of them, there were the three suspects — only one now, he supposed — and a couple of policemen from down the street who knew Shin'ichi by reputation and had been thus persuaded to stand back and let him direct the investigation. Kaito, for once exempt from the suspect list, had mostly hung back, watching from out of the way.

As maddening as it was to be cut off right on the edge of a breakthrough, he had to admit it was cool to see Shin'ichi really at work. The heists were — something else. A little game between people not meant to be friends. This was Shin'ichi in his element, and even if Kaito hadn't known him well it would have been clear from the very first moment that he had become famous as a high schooler for a reason. Shin'ichi had only spared him a brief, apologetic glance once the scene was under control before returning the whole of his focus to the show he was conducting to its inevitable conclusion.

This left Kaito with little to distract him from the smear of blood on the pavement but to observe and try to form his own impressions. He was grateful that the EMTs had come and gone quickly, not yet having managed to acquire a stern enough stomach for bloody injuries. The victim had been… in pretty bad shape when they took him away.

Kaito had to admit that despite the gruesome nature of the work, he did get a bit of a thrill out of the idea of his soulmate being pretty fucking talented. He knew it was a skill that Shin'ichi had honed, too, but the whip snap of his intuition really was something to behold.

Especially when it was someone else he was trying to put in jail for a change.

The scene became immediately less fun when the indicated suspect collapsed to her knees and began to weep. "You don't understand." Her voice was pure despair. "Nobody else saw what he'd done, but I did, and nobody believed me. I had to do something! I had to stop him."

One of her companions, a scowly sort of fellow named Okano who hadn't been shy about pointing fingers and trying to boss everyone around, gaped at her disbelievingly. His face slowly transformed into a mask of fury. "You're the one who was spreading those rumors about Ige-san? You nearly got him fired from his job, you little snitch! And now you do him in? If I'd known, I would've bashed your head in weeks ago."

He made as if to move towards the still-sobbing woman, and Kaito straightened up, wary of injecting himself into the situation lest he inflame things further. The policeman not occupied with cuffing Sasaki made to interfere, and Kaito hesitated again, wavering on the edge of taking a step forward.

Shin'ichi was faster than both of them. He interposed himself between Sasaki and Okano with a level of slippery quickness that Kaito would have admired under different circumstances. "Please keep hold of yourself, Okano-san," he admonished. "Justice will be sought for your friend. So long as you refrain from interfering with police business, this will all — "

At the surge of motion, Kaito was already moving a half-beat before Shin'ichi tried to spring backwards. He was delayed for a precious second by the cop and Sasaki behind him, the latter of whom shrieked in shock when he nearly stepped on her. Okano was fast — too fast — he grabbed Shin'ichi's upper arm and dragged him in just close enough, even as Shin'ichi broke the grip in a quick twist.

And then the other cop tackled Okano, and Kaito vaulted over their legs to catch Shin'ichi and lower him to the ground.

"Hey, hey, it's okay, don't move," he said, barely aware of the words as he yanked off his jacket and pressed it around the protruding hilt of the switchblade as blood welled up from the jagged cut. "I've got you; stay still, alright?"

Shin'ichi's hand wrapped loosely around one of Kaito's wrists. "I…" He licked his lips. "How deep is it?"

Kaito breathed in deep and forced himself to evaluate objectively. The blade had been yanked sideways and partly out when Okano had been tackled, making the wound wider than an in-and-out stab. He was dimly aware that Okano and Sasaki were both cuffed now and that someone was calling another ambulance. It all felt oddly disconnected from himself and Shin'ichi.

"The — knife was dislodged, but I still only see maybe four centimeters of actual blade." He could feel the full-body tremors trying to overtake him in the strain in his voice. "But it got dragged to the right more like — eight? It doesn't look… good."

"Ah." Shin'ichi was holding himself very still against the risk of jostling, even as his hands continued to move restlessly, touching and releasing what he could reach of Kaito. "I see."

Kaito's heart beat a frantic tattoo in his throat. He swallowed hard. "Not… not good, yeah?"

"Well, I've been stabbed badly before and lived." Shin'ichi's voice was calm, even matter of fact, despite the glazed look in his eyes. "But this kind of injury… sepsis is probably setting in as we speak. It's hard to come back from that."

He said it so calmly that Kaito struggled to process the words. "You... you mean you'll die."

Reset. He had to reset. Kaito couldn't lose — couldn't —

"It's likely." Shin'ichi took loose hold of his wrist again, and Kaito wasn't sure he was aware of it. "I… knew this was probably how things would end. I'm sorry you had to see it. KID, I — " He tried to move, and Kaito had to force him to lie still.

"Please don't move. I'm sorry, gods I'm so sorry." This hadn't happened in previous loops. Shin'ichi had come here because of him. Kaito's death reset the loops, but he'd bet a million yen that wouldn't be the case if Shin'ichi died. It might just break the loops entirely, leaving Kaito to go on without his soulmate.

Shin'ichi smiled glassily at him. "It's okay. I'm glad you're here. I hate being alone when I've been injured."

Kaito had to fight to bite down the shaky weakness that wanted to overtake him. He couldn't let go. He had to hold on, since Shin'ichi couldn't. "It's going to be okay, I promise." He barely recognized his own voice, strangled with terror. "I'll make sure you're okay."

"If you say so," Shin'ichi agreed. "I trust you. I don't think there's a way to fix this, though. Even for someone who does the impossible."

Kaito let go of the wound to seize Shin'ichi's wrist in one trembling hand, lifting it to his mouth for a single desperate kiss to his palm. "I can fix it," he said with the tang of iron on his tongue. "I can. Shin'ichi, I'm your — "

* * *

Kaito felt like some part of himself had died alongside Shin'ichi, even though Shin'ichi wasn't dead, he _wasn't_. Kaito could see him right then and there from his hidden vantage point. None of it had happened. Not the stabbing, not the night spent in the Kudou mansion, not the kissing or the sex. Nobody would remember it happening, except himself, and maybe Akako, at least for another day or so.

Shin'ichi was _fine_. None of it had ever happened to him. He was right there in his bedroom, asleep like any ordinary person would be at three in the morning.

There wasn't really a point in continuing to watch him. He'd had to bring along the night vision goggles like the epitome of a creep, and he was getting cold and stiff from sitting there.

But he didn't leave. He didn't move or do anything or even really think. He just sat there, mind spinning empty, until the sky began to lighten.

Kaito couldn't be there when people woke up without being discovered. His muscles and joints cramped and complained when he dragged himself upright, but he ignored them. It was hard to turn his back and walk away, like stretching elastic to its limit. It hurt, and Kaito had to squeeze his eyes shut tight against the threat of tears, but he did it anyway.

It was like leaving half of his heart behind, but he kept walking the lengthy residential blocks to the train station. The whole way home, he was dogged by a strange sense of finality.

Kaito wasn't ready to say goodbye, but some invisible barrier settled in place like concrete behind him, and he knew he wouldn't go back.

* * *

It wasn't until he was standing in his bedroom with his phone in hand that he realized what he was about to do, and at that point, the apathy had dragged him down so deeply that he barely felt more than a twinge of worry. He opened his messages and pinged Aoko. _Are you around?_

No reply. Kaito stared out the window to her house. The lights were on, and she'd been around previous Sundays. Maybe she was doing homework and had the app silenced.

He called her. She didn't pick up the first time, so he hung up and called again.

This time she answered, sounding breathless and impatient. " _What,_ Kaito? Aoko was in the shower, can you wait for once in your life?"

"Oh," he said, and even his voice sounded strange to him. "Sure, I guess. Can you come over after that, though? I wanted to show you something."

Aoko sighed. "Is it _another_ new magic trick? Can't it wait? Aoko has a mountain of homework to do, and Aoko knows you do too."

Kaito considered this, but the idea of waiting longer made something that wasn't entirely apathetic lash anxiously in his stomach. "I'd rather show you now," he said instead. "Or, soon, I mean. You can finish your bath. Shower."

"...Okay," Aoko said, and that was definitely her suspicious tone. She thought he was up to something, or thought it was a prank, or maybe she could just tell he was being weird. "Aoko'll be over in twenty minutes, okay?"

"Sure," Kaito agreed, and they hung up. He sat down on his bed to wait, and his thoughts were like strange, flickering birds, entrancing to watch but empty of meaning. It felt like only moments passed before Aoko was yelling up to him from downstairs, but a glance at his phone told him it was nearly half an hour later.

"I'm up here," he called, and listened to her footsteps take the stairs at a dash of several at a time, familiarity and habit both. She appeared in the doorway moments later, hair still wet and already messy again, feet clad only in her white socks with the pink frilly cuffs. Kaito felt a pang somewhere in his chest of something that was hard to put a word on. Affection? Fear?

"So what was so damn important?" Aoko leaned against the door frame and pulled a face at him. "This had better not be another one of your stupid pranks."

"Um, no." Kaito's voice still sounded weird to him, but he must be controlling it well enough, because Aoko just frowned at him expectantly.

"Well? What is it, then?"

"I…" Kaito found himself unexpectedly lost for words. His gaze was pulled to the portrait of his dad like a marble on a slope. "I wanted to show you…"

Aoko stepped into the room and inched slowly towards him. "Kaito…"

He looked back at her, and, ah. She had noticed there was something wrong.

At least he'd give her a reason good enough to hide the real one. At least it would be over soon, and he'd finally know, once and for all.

"Can you trust me?" he asked, voice sticky in his throat. "Just for a minute?"

"Aoko always trusts you," she said loyally. Kaito definitely didn't deserve her trust, but he'd just asked for it, and there was the answer.

"Okay," he said. He rubbed his palms on his knees to make sure they were dry before offering one to her. "Just follow me, then. And, um." He steeled himself. "I'm… sorry in advance."

He'd installed a ladder behind the portrait years ago so he didn't have to take the long way around. Like a coward, he spun the portrait so the normal side still faced them as they went through it. Just prolonging the inevitable, really.

They emerged into the workshop, and Kaito crossed to the wardrobe as Aoko gazed around, mouth agape. "Is this… your dad's workshop?" she guessed. "When did you find this? It's incredible!"

"It was his, yeah. He… bequeathed it to me. It was locked until I was sixteen." His hands were shaking. No time like the present, right?

"Until you were…" Aoko began, but her words died when Kaito shoved the wardrobe door open in one fell swoop.

His legs didn't exactly want to hold him, so he sat down on the ground, hoping it looked more or less like an intentional decision. "You… can hit me if you want."

Aoko was more expressionless than he'd ever seen her. She didn't look angry, or shocked, or betrayed. She just looked pale, and she wasn't looking away from the wardrobe.

"Explain," she said, and maybe that was quiet fury bubbling under her words after all.

Kaito nodded rapidly. "I — I found it when I was sixteen, just after the announcement of KID's return happened. Obviously it — it was a surprise! I was pretty shaken up to think my dad was a thief, you know? So I went to a heist to confront the fake and see if I could learn anything, I guess. I didn't really think it through at the time." He chanced another nervous glance at her.

Aoko slowly circled the chair and sat down in it, legs crossed at the ankle. She was still staring at the wardrobe. Kaito sucked in a deep breath and continued.

"The, the fake thief. He was… the person who had been my dad's accomplice for. For his… crimes. He thought I was my dad for a minute — I guess I probably scared the shit out of him, turning up like that — and started babbling, begging forgiveness for his death. For letting him be _murdered._ "

That was the crux of it. If Aoko could accept the need for justice, for revenge, that he had felt as a teenage idiot, then maybe…

Don't think about it. Just keep going.

"So, obviously I demanded to know what he meant, if my dad had really been a thief, if he had really been murdered. His — accomplice was pretty shocked to realize it was just me. He wasn't actually supposed to tell me, apparently, but that seems weird because — because my dad, he left me these recordings, ah, I can play some for you."

He went to get up, but Aoko made a sharp, cutting gesture. "Later. Explain first."

Right. Kaito sank back down onto the ground. "Um. Yeah, ignore that for now, uh, so the police showed up, I got his accomplice out of there and took a running leap off the roof with the hang glider. Very trial by fire, in retrospect. But, um, obviously I didn't plunge to my doom, and I got away okay. So I… just kind of kept up with it." Kaito swallowed hard. The worst bit was next. "I can't pretend it wasn't fun sometimes. There's… a thrill to getting away with something that's like nothing else. But I've always intended to stop. I just — I just have to find it first."

Aoko finally looked away from the wardrobe and took the workshop in again, probably picking up on a thousand details that were innocuous at first glance. "Right. The thing KID is searching for." Her tone was flat.

"Yeah." Kaito tucked his knees up and rested his arms around them. "At first I wasn't looking for anything. I was just trying to get famous and make a stink in hope that my dad's murderers would turn up, wondering why I was alive. And, uh, they did. Shot me out of the sky, broke a few of my ribs, but I learned what happened. Why they killed him."

It was too weird and difficult to watch Aoko analyze the room. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to spit the last part out more succinctly. "Basically, these criminals, they wanted to conscript him into stealing for them? There's this alleged doublet gem they want; it has this whole weird legend attached to it, but they wanted my dad to find it for them. Obviously he told them no way, and…"

And they'd burned him to death on his own stage with his family and assistant watching. Kaito scrubbed his palm across his eyes. They felt raw and gritty from lying awake since two, but he was used to dealing with sleepless nights by now. He'd be fine.

"Anyway. That's why. Half wanting them to keep showing themselves at the heists, maybe take a few potshots at me, in hopes the police finally get half a damn clue — " Stop, stop. Don't insult the cops, don't talk shit about the task force, _definitely_ don't imply even the slightest dig at her dad. "In hopes the police might notice something was wrong and investigate. Can't really dig up a whole criminal syndicate on my own, you know? But mostly I just want to find that fucking gem so I can shatter it to dust in front of the whole world and make this stupid fucking cycle finally stop."

He was done anyway, but he had to stop talking no matter what. The apathy had been viciously ripped off by the recitation, and keeping the tears swallowed in his throat had become close to unmanageable.

"I see," Aoko said after it was clear Kaito wasn't continuing.

The silence hung between them with painful acuity. He lifted his head and peeled his eyes open. "So, um…" _Don't say something selfish. Don't sound like an entitled crybaby._ He was an international criminal. If he couldn't deal with Aoko giving him her opinion, he shouldn't be in the job. "How… how mad are you?"

"Very."

Kaito cringed.

"But for a phantom, you aren't subtle." Her tone was so flat that Kaito had to struggle to process the sentence for a moment.

"I… wasn't? You mean…"

Aoko sighed, and finally slumped back in the chair. She looked so defeated, so tired, that Kaito had the impulse to go find a river for the sole purpose of flinging himself in it. "I didn't know, exactly. I was just choosing not to connect the pieces. I wanted to be wrong, so I never tried to guess."

Kaito… supposed that made sense, in some ways. She had stopped trying to prove he wasn't KID after the first year, hadn't dragged him out anymore when he had a heist planned. Just yelled at him for idolizing a thief and ignored the topic unless someone else brought it up.

"I'm…" His voice was doing the weird thing again, strained and reedy. "I'm really sorry."

"For what?" There was a challenge both in her voice and painted across her face.

"For… taking up so much of your dad's time, mostly. For stressing you out and being someone you hate." Kaito had an insomnia headache building behind his forehead. He rubbed his temples tiredly. "It's fine if you turn me in. You don't have to feel guilty about it. I knew what I was doing every step of the way."

"Aoko isn't going to turn you in, you idiot." The return to her usual speech pattern startled him; Kaito hadn't noticed her stopping. "You deserve it for hurting Aoko. For stealing from people and scaring them and for all the people who tried to use you to run scams so they could make money."

"I know," he said very quietly.

She sighed again, a gusty, exhausted noise. "Aoko has to think about it, okay? And maybe… maybe don't bother Aoko for a little while."

He nodded quickly, stomach wrapped up in knots. "That's fair, yeah. I'll leave you be until, uh, until you get in contact and tell me otherwise?"

She nodded determinedly. "Yes. Okay. Aoko will try not to take too long, because Bakaito is stupid, but he's still Aoko's friend."

Kaito's throat dried up, and he really did think he would cry for a moment. He kept it locked up in his throat as Aoko left, navigating her way back up the ladder.

The last thing he saw of her was those dumb, cutesy socks disappearing out of sight, and then he was alone.


	9. With the Devil in Hand

Kaito sat on the floor of the secret room where Aoko had left him in a strange state of paralysis.

It had gone well. It had gone remarkably well, really. It had gone as well as he had ever had a right to hope for.

So why did he feel like he was going to break in two?

The cracks inside him were spreading, splintering, leaving him feeling like a spiderwebbed network of latticed cleave points. All it would take was one tap to send him shattering to pieces.

Or maybe it wouldn't take anything at all.

Kaito tried to take his next breath. Couldn't. His head was swimming, pounding, his vision blurry, his body breaking into tremors. He heaved in oxygen despite his body's protests and then couldn't stop, rasping air in around the lump in his throat. He tried to swallow, tried to push it back down to a manageable level.

Instead, the dam broke.

His next breath came out a sob, and then the tears came, snotty and disgusting and wracking his body uncontrollably. Kaito curled in on himself, wrapping his arms around himself as if he was the one who had been stabbed. The pitiless tears were violent in their intensity, the way his whole body shook from invisible blows. He wished Aoko had stayed, and he cried harder from the selfishness of the thought. He wished anyone who cared even a shred about him was there, and damn the consequences. Jii, Nakamori-keibu, Shin'ichi, even Hakuba.

Kaito felt so alone that he might as well have been the only person left alive on the planet.

When the shaking became bad enough that he thought he might fall, he leaned the curled up knot of his body against the wardrobe for support, and the cold, unyielding texture sank into him like a stone, turning the shakes to shivers. He knocked his head sideways against it, and then again at the mild relief it provided. At least it was something different to feel, something that tapped into the unbearable amount of agony bubbling up in him. Siphoning it off a bit. And it couldn't inflict lasting injury on him, probably.

Rocking side to side, he let his head thump against the wardrobe in rhythm with the motion, still heaving in wheezy gasps of air and choking on the force of his sobs. It was a good thing the room was soundproofed to hell and back because there was nothing quiet about the tears, either. He cried himself hoarse and then some, feeling so out of control of his mind and body that he couldn't have stopped for anything less than Snake himself appearing in his basement with a bucket of lighter fluid, and even then, maybe not.

Eventually, the tidal force began to slow until he was left hiccuping and sniffing, tears still streaming down his face, the occasional sob catching in his throat as he tried to calm down. The cold of the wardrobe helped soothe the scraped, inflamed feeling as the chills finally began to abate, too. He rested his face against it and breathed open-mouthed, nose clogged and still leaking as much as his eyes.

As the tears reduced to a trickle, they seemed to take all his remaining energy and strength with them. He slumped down further until he was lying on his side on the cold floor, eyes shut, still wrapped up and curled into a ball. Kaito didn't feel better. He just felt as empty and cold as an unfilled crypt, and his head ached from dehydration.

The hollowness was almost comforting in its all-consuming nature. He didn't have to think or feel. He didn't have to do anything at all except lie there as much like an abandoned marionette as the uncaring master who left it there. Kaito almost would have welcomed Akako's mind-altering magic if it meant he didn't have to think or make decisions.

Eventually, self-preservation overtook his vague inclination to remain lying on the floor until he began to decompose. He half-crawled to the ladder and hauled himself up into the regular house. He was still so cold and felt disgusting from the crying, but he just didn't have anything left inside himself to care.

His bed awaited him, and he crawled inside without bothering to change any of his clothes, never mind that he'd worn them across half the city. The familiar warmth and comfort of his bed helped a tiny bit. It wrapped around him like an embrace, and he burrowed into it until only his nose and mouth peeked out.

Kaito had always imagined the stillness of being dead as a peaceful sort of thing, like a brief but deep sleep before the next life, but if it felt anything like his, he'd surely been wrong. The cold emptiness left him feeling like a broken thing, vulnerable against the unending hollowness, like sinking to the bottom of the crushing pitch depths of the ocean. 

He couldn't go on like this. 

——

Eventually, Kaito peeled himself upright again. He showered and dressed without bothering to soak. In the mirror he stared back at himself with strangely empty eyes, and he wondered if that was what he'd look like if he were Akako's slave.

The house felt like a beast that had clamped its jaws closed around him. Kaito needed to go somewhere, be somewhere new, just have a moment to pretend he wasn't deprived of any hint of normalcy or stability.

Well. At least that was a desire he could appease. Kaito grabbed his coat, yanked on his shoes, and practically jogged out the front door.

He ended up in a cheap old all-day restaurant that he and Aoko had gone to all the time in high school. The familiarity didn't comfort him, unfortunately. It left him feeling like a strange ghost haunting his own past.

Despite skipping breakfast, his stomach was still too tight to eat, and he ended up getting a drink and a light snack. There had never been many places to sit, but at that time of morning the place was nearly empty. Kaito leaned forward in his seat, propping himself against the table, and shut his eyes for a moment.

At least the solitude was nice, in a way. More peaceful than having to confront any of the nightmares currently plaguing his life.

The seat across from him squeaked as someone slid into it. He opened his eyes tiredly and wasn't particularly surprised to find Akako sitting across from him.

"Witch," he greeted.

"Hello, thief. You don't look too well," she said, voice unusually soft, almost as if she cared about his well-being beyond how it suited her.

"Wonder why," Kaito muttered, not caring if he was loud enough to be easily understood.

She just nodded. Her hair was pulled back for once, looped into a bun at the back of her head. It was an oddly vulnerable look on her, having so much of her neck and ears exposed. "Yes. I saw what happened."

Kaito huffed out a breath, trying to swallow a vague sense of hysteria creeping over him. "So you were there. Were you just going to let him die?"

Akako shook a stray lock of hair out of her face. "No, I saw it in my mirror. I was watching you yesterday morning, which never was. You'll be pleased to know I left you your privacy the night before, however."

Squeezing his eyes shut, Kaito scrubbed his hands over his face. He hadn't even considered that she might have been watching at the time. He didn't know whether she was telling the truth in claiming she hadn't, but that meant she at least saw some of it. The secret sweetness of touching and being touched by Shin'ichi soured in his stomach. "What do you want, Akako?"

"Only to talk. It's been a while, yes? If it sets your mind at ease, I don't expect anything from this meeting. I'm only here for conversation." She played with the options on the electronic menu for a minute before ordering herself some ordinary tea.

Kaito tried to think back. The last time they'd spoken... He wasn't sure how long ago it had been. "Okay. Talk, then."

She crossed her legs in a careful, dainty motion. Kaito begrudgingly approved of how calculated her movements were, designed to draw the eye and flatter her best features. He used similar tactics for distracting people, so they never worked on him anymore. "I suppose I'm concerned. It wasn't hyperbole when I said you didn't look well. Surely this isn't all psychological toll?"

Kaito sighed. "It's the bond. It gets stronger when I'm — with him, like it's trying to reel me in. And not being able to fulfill it makes it start to hurt. Happy?"

"Of course not." Akako leaned forward, frowning as if in concern, blouse falling open just enough to tantalize, though Kaito supposed that might be unintentional. "I wouldn't know from experience, but that sounds tiring. I don't think there's anything I can do to adjust the spell to cause less pain, if it comes from inside you. Not short of severing it entirely, I mean."

"Ha. Yeah." Kaito doubted she would if she could. He was probably lucky that she couldn't alter his internal experience without permission, though some kind of numbing agent to the constant ache in his chest that throbbed with every beat of his heart.

"Does spending time with him help?"

Kaito shrugged. "Sometimes."

Akako nodded. "I see. Are you having any luck with pursuing him?"

"Uhhh, wow, no. I'm not telling you that, are you serious?" Kaito leaned back as if physical distance might push her words away, but, of course, it did not.

Nor did it push away the truth that Kaito was dangling at the end of his rope without a glider. Without a helping hand of some form, he had nowhere to run to, no sanctuary to seek.

And getting Shin'ichi to realize without much help was going... slowly at best.

Akako was just watching him quietly, lips pursed in worry, hands folded non-confrontationally on the table. She even politely looked away when he blatantly stared at her in turn, busying herself with her order of tea as it arrived.

"Fine," he said. "I'm agreeing to nothing; I just want to hear your terms."

There it was: that brief gleam of cunning that she carefully shrouded away. "Well, then. I haven't had much time to sort out the details, of course. I've only passed half a day for your... weeks, would you say? Longer? — Regardless: my primary desire is to remove your immunity to my magic."

"Sure," Kaito said. "And after that? I'm more interested in hearing what you would do to me once you could treat my brain like clay. And don't claim you haven't thought about _that_ one; you've had years plotting it."

"Ah, of course." Akako reached up absent-mindedly and released her hair from its clasp, letting it spill long and dark over her left shoulder. She toyed with the comb that had held it in place. "The thing is, Kuroba-kun, that I understand myself better now than I did as a child. And I know you. I doubt you'd hold my attention forever once I could exert influence over you; I tend to tire of even interesting men who would follow at my slightest word."

"But I'm the only one who can resist you." 

"Not forever." Akako's gaze lingered on his crossed arms for a moment. "And once you're no longer special, who knows? I suspect I'd release you sooner than you might expect." 

"Am I supposed to find that reassuring? That you'd only keep me enslaved to your whims for, what, a decade instead of my whole life?" The frustrated, helpless rage was returning, and Kaito dug his fingers into his arms to keep the desire to lash out at bay. "No deal. I'd rather go insane than reach thirty under your thumb." 

She raised one delicate eyebrow. "What about a compromise, then? Say — an agreed upon length of time. Three years? Enough time to finish school, then have some time without external obligations before you commit to a lifetime of drudgery in the workforce?" 

Kaito sat up sharply without intending to. "Six months." 

She pulled a sulky expression. "Until the end of university." 

"Eight months." 

"A year and a half." 

"Ten months." 

"One year, and I won't be going lower than that." 

"Fine." The riotous, sick thrill of negotiating with her made Kaito's nerves feel ablaze, prickling and panicking through his body. "But I'm not agreeing yet. And — and there's more stuff to talk about. What about KID? And Aoko? I'm not giving up my whole life, too." 

She waved a dismissive hand. "Aoko-chan is my friend too, and I rather like the thought of snaring a phantom thief for myself. I won't tolerate attempts to escape me, however. You'll choose to stay of your own free will, and I will hold you to that promise." 

Kaito's stomach flipped. His food was long cold, and he didn't think he could stomach even a nibble of it. "Sure. Whatever. But I have to think about it first." 

She smiled the patient crocodile smile of a predator who knows she's winning. "Very well. Shall I find you later? After you've thought it over?" 

Kaito's pulse was racing, pounding the endless biting bruise of the soul bond against his ribs. "Before the heist — if you show up at half past eight, the rooftop gardens will be empty. The police will be between sweeps, and everyone else will be downstairs for the banquet. I — I'll give you an answer then, though I can't say I won't just put you off longer, okay?" 

"Agreed." She sat up straight in a smooth motion. "Well, I'll leave you to it, then. It's been a pleasure. Feel free to finish my tea if you'd like." 

She swept past him towards the door, a voluminous sleeve brushing Kaito's shoulder. His skin crawled from the touch. 

When he was sure she was gone, he buried his face in his hands and didn't move until the owner came over to kick him out. 

——

The thing that Kaito kept tripping over, like it or not, was that no matter what Akako did to him, at the end of the day, he would still be himself. He would walk away ultimately the same person, and he wouldn't be in her company for all hours of the day. He would have time with Aoko, with Jii, with the people who made him feel like maybe he was a whole person after all. 

And maybe he wouldn't be fine afterward, but she'd leave him alone after the year was up, and he would be free to live his life without all this endlessly circling bullshit. 

Well. She'd _probably_ leave him alone. Maybe he would live with the never-ending fear that she'd get bored and decide to come toy with him for a week or two out of the blue, but he wouldn't be beholden to her. There had to be other witches out there. If he could find one, he might even be able to restore his immunity. 

Or maybe not. 

More importantly, he would still be able to be KID. He would still have this piece of himself that, like it or not, was part of his core self. He would still be able to fulfill his father's legacy, would still be able to search for Pandora. 

On the other hand, heists meant seeing Shin'ichi. 

Without really thinking about it, Kaito's feet had led him to a park. He stood halted at the edge of it, staring out unseeingly. 

It wouldn't matter, then, if Shin'ichi ever noticed the potential between them. Kaito supposed that once all was said and done, there wouldn't technically be anything stopping him from seeking him out and beginning a relationship of some sort. They would just both have the dead, shriveled bond like a rock in their chests. 

Kaito was a good liar, but not good enough to span a lifetime, and Shin'ichi noticed everything. He would know Kaito was withholding something, and Kaito didn't _want_ to lie to someone he was dating. So, he would admit to what he had done, and Shin'ichi would… 

He didn't know. They'd never discussed soulmates in any real depth. Shin'ichi could be one of those people who didn't place much weight on them as easily as he could be one of the quiet romantics who would never stop the search for the person who held the other end of the bond. 

And Kaito would be the one who chose to smother it in infancy. 

No. He suspected his guilty conscience alone would ruin the relationship. 

Eventually, he prodded his feet into movement again, movements slow and weary. Akako must wield tremendous power. He'd known that all along, but her strength had only grown in the years they'd known each other, and to hold the world in the palm of her hand like this? 

Maybe it wouldn't matter that he would have time away from her. Maybe she would weave a compulsion to return to her so strong that he would be ruined. His mind shied away from the grimmer details, slippery as they swam just below conscious thought. The fact that he couldn't face them wasn't much of a vote in favor. 

He shouldn't. He should tell her no, and try again with Shin'ichi. Kaito had gotten closer to succeeding. In the end, would the pain of the unresolved bond really leave him worse off than a year of Akako treating his brain like putty to shape as she pleased? 

There was a sharp briskness to the air that spoke of the winter that Kaito would never see until the loop ended. He breathed it in, and the ache sharpened. He'd tried using the heat from a bath to dull it, but that had failed, too. It only flattened the pain into a dull burning that claimed enough of his body to nag constantly at his attention. 

He could issue Shin'ichi a direct challenge again, could try to entice him to puzzle out the mystery. He even should, probably. 

Kaito breathed in deep lungfuls of the chilly air again and again, feeling the ache expand and contract inside him as if it were a living thing. It felt like a second heartbeat to beat alongside his own, and yet it remained dizzyingly alien and grew in him like a tumor. 

And Shin'ichi still only seemed to feel the faintest pangs of it calling to him. 

Perhaps, in the end, what really mattered was simply that he no longer knew how to go on. 

Eventually, aware that he was making no progress in the debate one way or another, Kaito forced himself to turn his feet homeward. He had a heist to get ready for, a decision to make, and a heavy heart to balance on the scales of misery. 

——

Kaito hadn't been up here since the very first night, before he'd known about the trap closing in around him. He'd swooned at Shin'ichi's feet like a harlequin lady and had chosen different escape routes every night since. 

He had his disguises on him but had shed the one he'd gotten in with, feeling very out of place as he lounged amidst the careful grooming of the garden. He blended into the shadowy areas just fine, and there was a solid twenty minutes before the police would do a cursory sweep here again, but standing still and waiting hadn't been his modus operandi for this heist. 

He wasn't wearing the suit, or even his actual recon clothes, having forgone the hat in favor of being able to see the dark sky above. The air settled cold in his lungs with a strange heaviness, and he couldn't shake the lump in his throat or the stinging in his eyes. 

More than anything, he wanted so badly to just go home and cry himself to sleep and forget all of this. Akako wasn't exactly likely to let him go play hermit for a week, but neither was he prepared to drag himself through another stretch of increasingly painful days before snapping back to the start. 

Kaito didn't remember it being so cold before. Vaguely, he wondered if it was some kind of ominous portent. Who knew, at this rate? Maybe she really could influence the weather. 

Akako must have used some kind of magic to hide herself from sight, because she materialized from the shadow beside the wall between blinks, darkness draining off her in rivulets and swirling down to pool at her feet. She stepped out of the spot gracefully and when Kaito blinked again, the shifting shadows were still once again. 

Her gaze flickered over him assessingly, taking in the lack of pretense or uniform to keep her at bay, and she smiled slowly. "Good evening, Kuroba-kun." 

Kaito didn't bother to straighten up from his slouch against the wall. "Hey." 

"So? Have you come to a decision, then? I'm willing to give you all the time you need, if you aren't ready, you know." 

What Kaito hated the most about the way she spoke was the way she had learned to use gentleness to make herself sound reasonable. Her words weren't aggressive, not by themselves. He had to take a deep breath before he was able to speak again. "Yeah. I think I have." 

That same delighted, smug smile of triumph lingered around her mouth. "And?" 

The words were sticky as congealing glue on his tongue. "I'll give you a year of my time and let you break my immunity to you in exchange for an end to the loops." 

The smile bloomed. "I will break the bond so you will no longer be in pain, and you will give me your obedience in thanks as well." 

Kaito had to breathe in slowly through his nose to keep from leaping up and fleeing on the spot. When his options ran low, he had to run with what he was given. 

Even if it made his skin crawl and his stomach sick. 

"Agreed." His voice was weak even to his own ears. The nausea was pressing, but it was no worse than the way the ache in his chest had suffused to an icy hot burn just from steering clear of Shin'ichi despite the close proximity. Kaito braced himself for what it would feel like, the bond snapping. Maybe it would still hurt, just in a different way. Maybe Kaito would spend the rest of his life as achingly empty as someone whose soulmate had just recently died. 

In some ways, it would be worst of all if he didn't feel anything at all. Like his life before realizing who his soulmate was, except without the occasional pang of future possibility. 

The terror was making his heart race, as if the bond inside him was trying to flee as Akako came closer. Kaito stood his ground, disguising the shaking of his hands by sticking them in his pockets. 

"Very well," she said, and her voice was a dark promise. "Shall we seal it with a kiss?" 

Kaito desperately wanted to refuse, to hold out for his last moments of freedom, but he thought Akako might be petty enough to leave him to suffer if he did. He managed a short, jerky nod, and she put a hand on his chest to lean in. 

The door slammed open. The sound rang in Kaito's ears and he turned his head automatically to look, and as Shin'ichi burst into view he realized — 

He had been so busy trying to think past the pain from the bond that he hadn't been paying attention to the feeling of the compass needle swinging and shortening to track his antipodal point. 

Akako's hand tightened to a fist, catching a handful of his shirt as Kaito tried to move away. "You already agreed," she hissed. "You've made the deal. It's too late." 

"No, it's not." Shin'ichi regarded the two of them with all the sharpness that he turned on suspects of a crime. 

Kaito lost his breath at the sight of him all over again, standing there alive and intact and alert. The bond turned liquid and hot and sweet inside him all at once, like a chemical reaction sparked into motion. The relief of seeing him hit Kaito so hard that he felt weak at the knees. 

It wasn't until the sounds were already out of his mouth that Kaito realized he'd called out instinctively to Shin'ichi by his given name. He earned himself an arch look in return for the familiarity, and Kaito felt his ears turn hot. 

"I should hope you're not planning on using that face to blend in," Shin'ichi said, gaze shifting assessingly between each of them. Then, to Akako: "You're not his assistant." 

"No, she's not," Kaito said hurriedly. His hand had closed around Akako's wrist at some point, keeping her grip at least somewhat at bay. 

"Certainly not," Akako said. Her voice was sharp as a dagger, and it was strange to realize that he'd never seen the two of them in one place — had never seen the full furious storm of jealousy burst from under her skin. "Though it wouldn't take more than a halfwit to realize that." 

"Akako," Kaito said, and she immediately swung that razor smile on him again. 

" _You,_ " she said, "don't tell me what to do." 

With preternatural strength, she shoved him back hard against the wall — hard enough that Kaito had to gasp to catch his breath and for her to fist the cloth closest to his throat. "You're too late," she called to Shin'ichi without looking at him. Her gaze was focused directly on Kaito. In quieter tones, she said, "You already gave me permission, Kuroba Kaito. I can do what I please, and nothing you do can stop me." 

Kaito's skin turned clammy where her knuckles met his neck. "No," he croaked, and cleared his throat. "No, you're wrong. I, I take it all back, all of it. You don't get to — to — " 

And then Shin'ichi was there, close enough that his clothes brushed Kaito's bare skin. "You heard him. Step back," he said, tones hard enough to push a mountain out of place. "Or, if you prefer, I can bring you downstairs under terms of harassment and attempted assault." 

Kaito had never seen Akako so enraged. She let go of him, but Kaito could nearly taste the magic in the air as she called it to bubble up around her, something strong enough to leave smears of color on the backs of his eyelids when he blinked. "He's _mine,_ " she snarled. "You don't get to take him away from me." 

The words of warning that emerged from Kaito's mouth were strangely garbled, twisted like heat waves off concrete. Shin'ichi wrapped a reassuring hand around his forearm and squeezed lightly. Despite the radiating waves of infernal power that Akako burned with, he looked at her without fear. 

"I don't need to take him from anyone. You have no claim to him. You have no bond with him." His words had all the cut and clarity as the rarest of diamonds as he placed them firmly into reality. "Not when we both know perfectly well that the only one to claim is the soul bond he shares with me." 

The words hit Kaito like a bomb, and he lost his footing, trying to use the drag of the wall to slow his collapse to his knees. He sucked in a breath, thoughts obliterated by the searing heat and blossom of fresh green light that filled him until he thought surely it would burst from his skin, and the exhale came out as a sob. 

He was aware, in a peripheral sort of way, that he was breathing raggedly enough to cause concern, but Shin'ichi had dropped down beside him and had an arm around Kaito's back. His voice reached Kaito's ears as concern, but understanding was beyond him. 

Kaito just cried. 

It didn't take too long for him to come back to himself enough to understand that Shin'ichi was still talking to Akako. When he scrubbed an arm roughly over his eyes and peered blurrily upwards, he found her standing as still and grim as a statue. The power had faded from her grasp, and she just stood there as she was: a girl no older than Kaito who had nobody except easily controlled peers to ever guide her path. 

" — wrong if you thought you would get away with no one knowing or believing what you tried to do," Shin'ichi was saying. "I remember what you did now. I know what you were trying to do to him. If you don't stay away, I can and will make your life hell. I have connections all over the globe; I know people from the NPA security bureau all the way to the FBI." 

"You…" Akako, for once, looked lost. 

"At a guess," Shin'ichi said, "you really shouldn't have placed the weight of your... magic spell on a soul bond. I wouldn't be surprised if that was your fatal error, in fact. I couldn't tell without having the context of being able to see all the days from the outside, but I think the bond's gravity well has been pulling at me for — at least a week, and it grew and grew. I think tonight I could have found him just about anywhere in the world." 

Akako was silent. Kaito caught himself burrowing closer to Shin'ichi's side and tried to still, but Shin'ichi just gently tugged him closer without acknowledging him directly. Kaito had been humiliated enough in front of Akako to feel shameless about hiding his face in Shin'ichi's shoulder as he caught his breath. 

"Go home, Akako-san," Shin'ichi said quietly. "You had already lost the very moment you'd begun." 

When Kaito looked up again, she was gone, and he could finally breathe without strain. 

How strange it was, to realize he'd been carrying the curse like a flexible, compressive shell around himself. He felt so disoriented from it that he wasn't sure he could trust his own limbs, like his depth perception had been skewed by the curse until it seemed normal. 

And despite everything, he still felt shy when he snuck a glance at Shin'ichi. "You… remember?" 

He nodded. "I don't know if anyone else will, but if my hypothesis is right, I've been pulled right along with you. We can go over it later and figure it out. But — yeah. I remember now." Kaito had the feeling Shin'ichi was studying him to evaluate his mental state. "Are you okay?" 

Kaito — took a second to think about it. He could still feel the phantom pressure of Akako's fist at his throat, if he stopped to think even for a moment. The ragged ache of the soul bond settling at last didn't — hurt, but it wasn't quite comfortable yet. Overstretched, overtaxed, strung out. 

But Shin'ichi knew. He remembered Kaito trying endlessly to reach him. 

"Maybe," he said at last. "Not — not yet. I've known her a long time, I guess. But I'm okay for the moment." 

Shin'ichi touched his wrist, a light, tentative thing. "Do you need to go? So you can do the heist?" 

"Uh." Kaito laughed despite himself. "Honestly? Fuck the heist. I just want to get out of here." 

Shin'ichi laughed, too, an only half-mirthful moment of shared hysterics. "Okay," he said. "I can make that happen. Do you want to go to your place? You're — welcome at mine as well, of course." 

Kaito considered it for a second, the span of a breath of two. "Maybe yours?" he suggested uncertainly. "I'm — a little tired of looking at the same walls." 

"Sure." The lack of concern over Kaito's choice reassured him that Shin'ichi truly was fine with either choice. "Let's go downstairs, if you're okay going through the throng. I need to let a few people know that I have to go, and then we can leave. Unless you'd rather meet me there?" 

Kaito shook his head. "I'd — rather stay with you. If that's okay, I mean." 

When Shin'ichi helped him to his feet, he didn't let go of Kaito's hand. "Of course it is." 

They descended via a short staircase and an elevator. Kaito didn't bother doing more than making sure there was nothing obviously thiefy about himself. People knew soulmate bonds were an odd thing. They would give them the courtesy of not prying. 

He ended up right next to the very same seat he'd once occupied before at the table where Shin'ichi had been supposed to eat. "I'll be right back," Shin'ichi promised in an undertone before hurrying off in the general direction of Nakamori-keibu. 

"Kuroba-kun?" a puzzled voice asked, breaking Kaito out of the strangely calm reverie he was in. 

Kaito blinked at Hakuba. "Oh. Hi." 

Hakuba examined him in a quick glance. "You… don't look well." 

The nauseated terror Akako had inspired in him rose back up, and Kaito had to swallow it down hard, blinking just enough to keep back the stupid tears that kept wanting to return. "I, that's because, uh. I guess I'm not. Well, I mean." 

Hakuba considered him for another moment before his gaze flickered towards where Shin'ichi had vanished. "Do you… need assistance?" He looked discomfited enough that it was almost funny, but all the same, it was weirdly reassuring to see a familiar face. 

"I'm okay," he said, and this time it felt a little more true. "I… there was… some complications. Uh. With Akako, I guess. She wasn't super happy that, uh." 

It was hard to finish the sentence. 

"Something to do with Kudou-kun?" Hakuba guessed shrewdly. 

Kaito nodded. 

"He's… a good friend to have." 

"I know," Kaito said quietly. 

And then Shin'ichi was back. "Hey," he said, only slightly breathless from the way he'd rushed off. "Ready to go?" 

"Yeah," Kaito said, feeling the half-finished conversation still keeping him in place. "I… guess I'll see you around, Hakuba." 

The evaluating look was back, but it didn't rankle. "Take care, Kuroba-kun." 

And they left. Once they were outside, Shin'ichi walked close enough to bump elbows together. "Is the subway okay? I can call a friend for a ride, if you'd rather." 

Kaito shook his head. "This is fine. Actually, uh — I need to let my assistant know I'm calling it off. He can get a note to the Inspector." 

"Sure," Shin'ichi said. "Is it… too soon for me to meet him?" 

Kaito considered it, bouncing the toe of his shoe against the ground. "No," he said at last. "I actually think he'll like you. Once he gets over the scary evil detective thing, I mean." 

That made Shin'ichi grin, and it was a charming expression on him, just mischievous enough to make an answering smile tug at Kaito's face too. "He's nearby?" 

"I'll call him," Kaito decided. It would make up, at least a little, for how much he'd left Jii in the dark during the loops. 

Gods. The loops were over — really, truly over. He could feel it like a stone he didn't know he'd swallowed until it was gone. He could keep mending things with Aoko. He could tell Jii at least some of what had happened. 

He could introduce Shin'ichi to the strange, infinitely precious cluster of people he had to call family. 

Leaning into Shin'ichi's side, uncaring who might see, he pressed the speed dial. "Hi, Jii-chan. So… no heist tonight. Something's come up." 

Despite the worried clamor Jii immediately stirred up in his ear, Kaito found himself smiling. "No, seriously, just forget all that. Can you come meet me outside the building? There's, uh. There's someone I'd like you to meet." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly -- a huge thanks to my wonderful artist, TeaCup. They did an incredible job and were amazing to work with. Also a shout out to my lovely wife for betaing this monster with me! She was a big help with everything from talking me into choosing to write this fic to the initial outline and structure to the final edits. Also, thank you to katsukifatale for hosting this event and to everyone who has read and left comments/kudos. 
> 
> The title of this fic is drawn from the music piece by the same name, composed by Charles Gounod in 1872. It's a fun little song and made a great title. 
> 
> There may eventually be an epilogue forthcoming about the fallout in Kaito's friend group and life, though I couldn't say when it'll happen. We shall see how it goes. 
> 
> <3


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